The behavioural assessment of savouring in schizotypal anhedonia: The Verbal Fluency Test of Enjoyable Experiences (VFTEE)

• A new measure of hedonic processing called the VFTEE is presented and assessed.
• The VFTEE elicits memories and predictions of positive experiences.
• It uses ease of generation, or verbal fluency, as an index of savouring ability.
• The measure can distinguish performance of negative schizotypes from hypomanics.
• Negative schizotypes versus non-schizotypes exhibit decreased hedonic verbal fluency.

Hedonic response is abnormal in negative schizotypy. Using self-report methods, Applegate, El-Deredy, and Bentall (2009) reported that schizotypal anhedonia was associated with a poor capacity to savour, where savouring is the ability to mentally rehearse past, present and future pleasant experiences. A behavioural measure of savouring, the Verbal Fluency Test of Enjoyable Experiences (VFTEE), was developed, and reliability and validity were assessed. The VFTEE elicits memories and predictions of positive experiences, using ease of generation as an index of savouring ability.Sixty-seven students, who scored high and low on measures of negative schizotypy and hypomania, completed questionnaire measures of hedonic functioning. Evoked affect was assessed on four trials of the VFTEE and an incentivised card-sorting task. The VFTEE demonstrated good internal reliability. Correlation and regression analyses revealed stylistically different abnormalities in how hypomanic and negatively schizotypal groups savour behaviourally.