Avolition in schizophrenia has been attributed to an underlying decoupling between affect and volitional action. It may be demonstrated behaviourally in the Anticipatory Consummatory Pleasure (ACP) task, whereby subjects may adjust the viewing (in time or future probability) of images with positive or negative affective content. Correspondence between response vigour and perceived affective intensity of the images was typically poorer in people with schizophrenia than healthy controls. Here, we investigated if ACP performance would be similarly modulated by schizotypal traits in the non-clinical population. Schizotypal traits were assessed in healthy adult volunteers using Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief before evaluation of ACP performance. Association between the three schizotypal traits and affect-volition coupling was examined by correlative analysis followed by comparison between dichotomized clusters. Affect-volition coupling appeared to correlate positively with increasing schizotypal traits, especially in the interpersonal and disorganization dimensions. Direct comparison between the two clusters of subjects demarcated with respect to all three schizotypy dimensions showed that actions motivated by future affective outcomes was selectively potentiated, as opposed to in-the-moment outcomes, in the higher schizotypy cluster. The positive modulation of affect-volition coupling by schizotypal traits seen here was unexpected given the robust decoupling reported in people with schizophrenia. Our data also contradicted with previous ACP studies reporting either an opposite or null relationship between schizotypy and affect-volition coupling. We speculate that the relationship across a more extended continuum of schizotypal traits may follow an inverted U-shape, thus either ends of the continuum is associated with suboptimal ACP performance.

精神分裂症的意志被归因于情感和意志行为之间潜在的脱钩。它可以在预期性愉悦（ACP）任务中以行为方式得到证明，受试者可以通过该任务调整对具有积极或消极情感内容的图像的观看（在时间或未来概率中）。精神分裂症患者的反应强度和感知到的图像情感强度之间的一致性通常比健康对照者差。在这里，我们研究了非临床人群中 ACP 表现是否会受到精神分裂特征的类似调节。在评估 ACP 表现之前，使用分裂型人格问卷简述对健康成年志愿者的分裂型特征进行评估。通过相关分析和二分簇之间的比较来检查三种分裂型特征和情感-意志耦合之间的关联。情感-意志耦合似乎与精神分裂特征的增加呈正相关，特别是在人际和解体维度上。根据所有三个分裂型维度划分的两组受试者之间的直接比较表明，在较高的精神分裂型集群中，由未来情感结果激发的行动被选择性地增强，而不是当下的结果。鉴于精神分裂症患者报告的强烈解耦，这里看到的精神分裂特征对情感-意志耦合的积极调节是出乎意料的。我们的数据也与之前的 ACP 研究相矛盾，该研究报告了精神分裂和情感-意志耦合之间存在相反或无效的关系。我们推测，跨越更广泛的分裂型特征连续体的关系可能遵循倒 U 形，因此连续体的任一端都与次优的 ACP 表现相关。