Gaze Strategies During Planning in First-Episode Psychosis

Eye movements were measured during the performance of a computerized Tower of London task to specify the source of planning abnormalities in patients with 1st-episode schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Subjects viewed 2 arrays of colored balls in the upper and lower parts of the screen. They were asked to plan the shortest sequence of moves required to rearrange the balls in the lower screen to match the upper arrangement. Compared with healthy controls, patients made more planning errors, and decision times were longer. However, the patients showed the same gaze biases as controls prior to making a response, indicating that they understood the requirements of the task, approached the task in a strategic manner by identifying the nature of the problem, and used appropriate fixation strategies to plan and elaborate solutions. The patients showed increased duration of long-gaze periods toward both parts of the screen. This suggests that the patients had difficulty in encoding the essential features of the stimulus array. This finding is compatible with slowing of working memory consolidation.