Persons suffering from schizophrenia have a different perception of time than healthy individuals. There is far more variation in the way that a time interval is perceived by people with schizophrenic disorders than by those who do not have the condition. Patients with schizophrenia are also less precise when it comes to judging the temporal order of events. These are the conclusions drawn from the results of a meta-analysis undertaken by psychologists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany, for which they evaluated 68 international publications from the past 65 years and compared the data of 957 schizophrenia patients with that of 1,060 healthy control persons. The results were published online on March 29, 2017 in Clinical Psychology Review. The article is titled “Meta-Analysis of Time Perception and Temporal Processing in Schizophrenia: Differential Effects on Precision and Accuracy.” Although the clinical syndrome known as schizophrenia is already widely recognized, the connection between gthe cognitive and neurological impairments on the one hand and the patient's symptoms on the other remains unclear. One theory that is current among schizophrenia researchers is that errors in temporal information processing could underlie the disorder and give rise to the known symptoms, such as the hallucinations experienced by patients who might, for instance hear voices, and the disconnection between actions and thoughts. In their meta-analysis, psychologists Sven Thönes, at present a researcher at the Leibniz Research Center for Working Environment and Human Factors in Dortmund, and Dr. Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel of the Department of Psychology at Mainz University investigated whether there was evidence in support of the hypothesis that there is disruption of time perception and temporal processing in schizophrenia patients.Login Or Register To Read Full Story