Impaired context processing during irony comprehension in schizotypy: An ERPs study Sarah Del Goleto ⁎, Milena Kostova, Alain Blanchet Laboratoire de Psychopathologie et Neuropsychologie (EA 2027), Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint-Denis, France abstract article info Article history: Received 15 December 2015 Received in revised form 15 April 2016 Accepted 22 April 2016 Available online xxxx Mentalizing deficits are a core manifestation of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. They contribute to the social handicap associated with the pathology, leading to disruption in autonomy, professional achievement, and interpersonal relationships. However, the underlying mechanisms of these deficits remain poorly understood. The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that context processing deficits would be responsible for mentalizing difficulties in schizotypy (personality traits considered as attenuated manifestations of schizophrenic symptoms) by using an irony comprehension task. Irony processing is a mentalizing exercise that requires the ability to take into account the semantic context to understand the literal meaning of the utterance, and to integrate the pragmatic context to infer the speaker's intention. These two steps of processing can be indexed by the N400 and P600 components, respectively, of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Forty participants were assigned to high or low schizotypy groups according to their Schizotypal Personality Question- naire (SPQ) score, and ERPs were recorded while they read short stories ending with a literal, ironic, or incompat- ible statement. In the low-SPQ group, there was a significant N400 semantic context effect (literal targets elicited less negative N400 amplitudes compared to incompatible targets) followed by a P600 pragmatic context effect (ironic targets evoked greater positive P600 amplitudes than literal targets). In contrast, there was neither a N400 nor P600 effect in the high-SPQ group. These abnormalities were associated with high interpersonal SPQ factor scores. These results show a strong association between context processing, mentalizing abilities, and interpersonal functioning in schizophrenia spectrum. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Schizotypy Theory of mind Context processing Irony N400 P600 1. Introduction Schizotypy refers to a cluster of both genetically and environmen- tally influenced personality traits related to schizophrenia spectrum pathology (Cohen et al., 2015). These traits can be observed in the general population. They are temporally stable, and resemble clinical manifestations of schizophrenia (Ettinger et al., 2014). For example, schizotypy has a positive dimension (e.g. magical ideation and percep- tual aberration) that is similar to positive symptoms in schizophrenia, but also a negative dimension (e.g. anhedonia), similar to negative symptoms in schizophrenia (Nelson et al., 2013; Ettinger et al., 2014). Moreover, schizotypal features are recognized as risk factors of schizo- phrenia and psychosis more generally. For example, in a 10 years longitudinal study conducted among 508 students with schizotypal traits, Kwapil et al. (2013) showed that the positive and the negative dimensions of schizotypy were predictive of later development of schizophrenia spectrum disorders and functional deficit. At the genetic level, several family studies showed a higher prevalence of schizotypy in relatives of patients with schizophrenia than in general population (Calkins et al., 2004). In addition, associations between the profile and the severity of clinical symptoms of patients and schizotypy dimensions of their relatives have been demonstrated. For instance, it has been shown that the severity of psychotic patients' positive symptoms were associated with their relatives' positive schizotypy score (Fanous et al., 2001). Thus, these data support the dimensional approach to schizo- phrenia, which proposes that schizotypal personality traits lies on a continuum that begins with normality and proceeds towards the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, with schizophrenia at the upper end (Claridge and Beech, 1995). On the other hand, a growing body of research suggests that symp- toms of schizophrenia and corresponding high schizotypal personality scores in non-clinical samples are associated with similar disruptions in cognitive functioning (Cochrane et al., 2012). Studies among schizotypal subjects without confounding factors of chronic psychiatric illness (e.g. hospitalization and medication) may thus provide impor- tant insights on the cognitive mechanisms underlying schizophrenic disorder (Gooding and Pflum, 2011). Social cognitive impairments are one of the most characteristic man- ifestations of schizophrenia (see Savla et al., 2013, for a meta-analysis). International Journal of Psychophysiology xxx (2016) xxx–xxx ⁎ Corresponding author at: Laboratoire de Psychopathologie et Neuropsychologie (EA 2027), Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint Denis, 2 rue de la Liberté, 93 526 Saint Denis, France. E-mail address: sarahdelgoleto@gmail.com (S. Del Goleto). INTPSY-11098; No of Pages 9 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.04.009 0167-8760/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Psychophysiology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpsycho Please cite this article as: Del Goleto, S., et al., Impaired context processing during irony comprehension in schizotypy: An ERPs study, Int. J. Psychophysiol. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.04.009