This case report concerns a woman with intellectual disability, schizoaffective disorder, and avoidance and refusal of having her blood drawn. She required but refused blood draws to properly monitor the therapeutic dose of a necessary psychotropic medication. During intervention at a community-based habilitation setting and under simulated…

Schedules of reinforcement typically produce reliable patterns of behaviour, and one factor that can cause deviations from these normally reliable patterns is schizotypy. Low scorers on the unusual experiences subscale of the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences performed as expected on a yoked random-ratio (RR), random-interval…

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been associated with sensory hypersensitivity. A recent study reported visual acuity (VA) in ASD in the region reported for birds of prey. The validity of the results was subsequently doubted. This study examined VA in 34 individuals with ASD, 16 with schizophrenia (SCH), and 26 typically developing (TYP).…

The Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM) is a 60-item test for measuring abstract reasoning, considered a nonverbal estimate of fluid intelligence, and often included in clinical assessment batteries and research on patients with cognitive deficits. The goal was to develop and apply a predictive model approach to reduce the number of items…

Social and communicative deficits, restricted interests and repetitive behaviors are diagnostic features of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The present study examined the relationship between autistic characteristics and schizophrenia-spectrum traits as well as between autistic characteristics and obsessive-compulsive traits in typically…

The Trail-Making Test (TMT) is a widely used neuropsychological measure that assesses visuomotor abilities and cognitive flexibility. For the TMT-A condition participants are required to locate and connect numbers (i.e. 1-2-3...) while in the TMT-B condition participants perform the set-shifting task of locating and connecting numbers and letters…

Social workers are major mental health providers and, thus, can be key players in guiding consumers and their families to accurate information regarding schizophrenia. The present study, using the WebMedQual scale, is a comprehensive analysis across a one-year period at two different time points of the top for-profit and nonprofit sites that…

Objective: A substantial gap exists between patients and their mental health providers about patient's perceived barriers, facilitators, and motivators (BFMs) for taking antipsychotic medications. This article describes how we used an intervention mapping (IM) framework coupled with qualitative and quantitative item-selection methods to…

Objective: In early-onset schizophrenia (EOS), the earliest structural brain volumetric abnormalities appear in the parietal cortices. Early exposure to cannabis may represent an environmental risk factor for developing schizophrenia. This study characterized cerebral cortical gray matter structure in adolescents in regions of interest (ROIs) that…

The current study provides convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity data for a new measure of schizotypy from the perspective of the five-factor model (FFM) of general personality structure. Nine schizotypy scales were constructed as maladaptive variants of respective facets of the FFM (e.g., Aberrant Ideas as a maladaptive variant of…

We evaluated the effects of fixed-interval (FI), fixed-time (FT), and conjoint (combined) FI FT reinforcement schedules on the responding of 3 adults who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Responding on vocational tasks decreased for 2 of 3 participants under FT alone relative to FI alone. Responding under FI FT resulted in response…

Targeted physical activity interventions to improve the poor physical function of older adults with schizophrenia are necessary but currently not available. Given disordered thought processes and institutionalization, it is likely that older adults with schizophrenia have unique barriers and facilitators to physical activity. It is necessary to…

This study investigated emotion recognition abilities and visual scanning of emotional faces in 16 Fragile X syndrome (FXS) individuals compared to 16 chronological-age and 16 mental-age matched controls. The relationships between emotion recognition, visual scan-paths and symptoms of social anxiety, schizotypy and autism were also explored.…

Compared to the general pediatric population, children with autism have higher rates of co-occurring medical and psychiatric illnesses, yet very little is known about the general health status of adults with autism. The objective of this study was to describe the frequency of psychiatric and medical conditions among a large, diverse, insured…

Paired associates learning is impaired in both schizophrenia and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), which may reflect hippocampal pathology. In addition, schizophrenia is characterized by the dysfunction of the retino-geniculo-striatal magnocellular (M) visual pathway. The purpose of this study was to investigate the interaction between…