Relations Among Anhedonia, Reinforcement Learning, and Global Functioning in Help-seeking Youth

Dysfunction in the neural circuits underlying salience signaling is implicated in symptoms of psychosis and may predict conversion to a psychotic disorder in youth at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. Additionally, negative symptom severity, including consummatory and anticipatory aspects of anhedonia, may predict functional outcome in individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. However, it is unclear whether anhedonia is related to the ability to attribute incentive salience to stimuli (through reinforcement learning [RL]) and whether measures of anhedonia and RL predict functional outcome in a younger, help-seeking population. We administered the Salience Attribution Test (SAT) to 33 participants who met criteria for either CHR or a recent-onset psychotic disorder and 29 help-seeking youth with nonpsychotic disorders. In the SAT, participants must identify relevant and irrelevant stimulus dimensions and be sensitive to different reinforcement probabilities for the 2 levels of the relevant dimension ("adaptive salience"). Adaptive salience attribution was positively related to both consummatory pleasure and functioning in the full sample. Analyses also revealed an indirect effect of adaptive salience on the relation between consummatory pleasure and both role (αβ = .22, 95% CI = 0.02, 0.48) and social functioning (αβ = .14, 95% CI = 0.02, 0.30). These findings suggest a distinct pathway to poor global functioning in help-seeking youth, via impaired reward sensitivity and RL

Cross-cultural adaptation of Rotter's General Locus of Control instrument

Objective: To perform a cross-cultural adaptation of the General Locus of Control (GLoC) questionnaire, which measures where people place causation of events in their lives, i.e., if they interpret events as being the result of their own actions or external factors. Methods: After translation and back-translation, a multidisciplinary committee judged and elaborated different versions of the GLoC questionnaire, with a focus on conceptual equivalence, content, comprehensibility and adjustment to the Brazilian socioeconomic context. The final version was tested on 71 healthy subjects, of whom 36 were reinterviewed and answered the GLoC questionnaire twice, after a mean of 73.06±74.15 days (range = 29-359). Results: The participants’ mean age was 30.82±12.83 years (range = 18-69), 62% were women, and mean years of schooling were 12.54±4.21. Test-retest reliability (Pearson’s) was r = 0.828. Internal consistency resulted in a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.906. The mean GLoC score obtained was 8.77±3.11 (n = 71). Conclusion: The Portuguese version of the GLoC questionnaire is a faithful adaptation of Rotter’s original questionnaire.</p