Time production in schizophrenia: a deficit in alternating time intervals

Time is central to all motor behaviour. The aim here was to assess timing synchronisation and continuation capacities in schizophrenia, a pathology that is characterized by attention deficits. Patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls performed a series of tapping tasks (asynchronous perception; alternated rhythmic production; spontaneous motor tempo) in addition to clinical tests evaluating memory and attention capacities. Results revealed preserved spontaneous motor tempo and asynchrony perception performances for patients. Nevertheless, timing errors were revealed especially on those rhythmic trials requiring time-alternation. Correlation analyses further suggest that the timing errors in schizophrenia are related to a problem in the use of the attentional capacities for the fluent production of movement. More precisely, a deficit in the top-down grouping of the time intervals may explain the deficit in attention flexibility.