The Sensory Filter in Schizophrenia: A Study of Habituation, Arousal, and the Dopamine Hypothesis

Abstract

SummaryThe possible failure of a notional sensory filter in schizophrenia was studied by means of habituation of the orienting response. Non-paranoid schizophrenics failed to habituate, but paranoids habituated normally. Paranoids, however, showed a different impairment: they responded to a dishabituating tone as if the novel stimulus were somewhat familiar.The failure of habituation in non-paranoids could not be explained in terms of arousal when the index was the rate of skin conductance fluctuation. Neurotic controls showed considerably higher levels than either group of schizophrenics.Non-paranoid schizophrenics had lost the normal inverse relationship between habituation and level of arousal as manifested in the rate of spontaneous skin conductance fluctuation.