Sleeping Stones and Other Implausible Agents: Agency of Subjects and Eye Movements in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders

This study aimed at testing the presence of a disrupted lexical representation of verbs thematic grid in people with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (SSD).A silent-reading task was administered to 32 people with SSD and 32 matched healthy participants (HP). Stimuli were sentences including or not a semantic violation of the animacy trait of the subject. Data on Gaze Duration (GD), Total Fixation Duration (TFD) on verbs, and probability of go-back movements from the verb were recorded.When the anomalous grammatical subject was the Agent of the event, we found a significant increase of GD in HCs, but not in SSDs. In addition, when the anomalous subject was a Theme, SSDs displayed an increased probability of regressions, unlike HCs.These results are suggestive of a higher tolerability for anomalous Agents in SSD compared to the normal population, possibly derived from a disrupted lexical representation of the verb thematic grid.