Evaluation of trait adjectives and ego pathology in schizophrenia: An N400 study

Schizophrenia patients and controls were shown trait adjectives in reference to themselves. Participants had to decide if the presented trait adjective was congruent or incongruent with their own self-concept. Only in controls, the N400 was significantly more negative in the incongruent compared to the congruent condition. Controls seemed to profit from a stable self-concept as they were faster in judging if a given trait was descriptive for the self than for someone else, which might result from processes related to the self-reference effect. Interestingly, in schizophrenia patients, the higher the scores for ego pathology were, the smaller the N400 effect turned out to be. The diminished N400 effect is probably associated with a disturbed self-concept in schizophrenia.