Investigating vision in schizophrenia through responses to humorous stimuli

摘要: The visual environment of humans contains abundant ambiguity and fragmentary information. Therefore, an early step vision must disambiguate the incessant stream Humorous stimuli produce a situation that is strikingly analogous to this process: Funniness associated with incongruity contained in joke, pun, or cartoon. Like general, appreciating pun as funny necessitates disambiguation incongruous perceived funniness puns was implemented study perception sample 36 schizophrenia patients 56 healthy control participants. We found both Theory Mind (ToM) content were increased experienced funniness. This significantly less so participants schizophrenia, consistent gestalt hypothesis which would predict compromised perceptual organization patients. association not mediated by known predictors humor appreciation, such affective state, depression, extraversion. Patients higher excitement symptoms and, at trend level, reduced cognitive symptoms, reported lower experiences. An open question remained whether showed deficiency detection independent their ToM deficiency. may be viewed convenient method processes, but also fundamental questions higher-level cognition.