Evaluation of an Intervention Program Designed to Improve Understanding of Irony on the Hemispheric Processing of Ambiguous Figurative Language in Adults With Schizophrenia

The overreaching goal of this study is to examine the influence of short CBT of irony comprehension on hemispheric involvement of adults with Schizophrenia. To obtain this goal a three phase study have been designed.

In the first phase all participants will be asked to fill out questionnaires screening for, cognitive abilities (TONI-3 third edition), vocabulary (Hebrew adaptation of Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition, WAIS 3 HEB, Wechsler 1997), executive function capabilities and figurative language understanding (irony and metaphor) .Theory of Mind comprehension will also be assessed by using The Hinting Test (Corcoran et al.1995).

Hemispheric processing will be examined by two behavioral hemispheric experiments using split visual field paradigm. The subject sits in front of a computer screen, reads a prime sentence, and reacts to a lateralized target word.

In the first experiment- Idioms experiment, the target word in each trail would be related to the meaning of a preceding prime idiom or associated to its literal meaning .The participant is instructed to indicate as rapidly and accurately as possible whether the target word stimulus is a meaningful word or non- word. In the second experiment- irony experiment, the target word in each trail would be a literal, ironic or unrelated ending to the preceding prime sentence .Subjects would be asked to relate to the target word and to indicate as rapidly and accurately as possible whether the target word stimulus formed a meaningful expression with the preceding prime. Stimulus presentation and response would be controlled and recorded by Super-Lab 4.5 software.

The first phase will be carried out in 1-2 sessions.