Disorganization impairs cognitive maps built from visual inputs

Abstract

Background and HypothesisCognitive disorganization is a core disturbance across the psychosis spectrum, characterized by difficulties integrating perceptual information into coherent representations. How such disturbances affect the construction of internal cognitive maps remains unclear. A key question is whether these maps emerge from visual input as readily as from language structure. We hypothesized that cognitive disorganization would impair cognitive maps derived from visual input while sparing performance when structure was provided linguistically. Study DesignParticipants with varying schizotypy learned food items associated with two attributes: who consumed the food (age group) and when it was consumed (time of day). These attributes were presented as images or language descriptions and organized in a two-dimensional (2D) conceptual space. Participants then completed similarity judgment and reward-learning tasks requiring inference of the underlying relational structure. Study ResultsAmong individuals with higher cognitive disorganization, 2D distances were less predictive of similarity judgments, but only when relational structure had to be inferred from visual input. In the reward-learning task, computational modeling indicated that decisions were guided by spatial representations (Gaussian process). Higher cognitive disorganization was associated with weakened spatial generalization when structure had to be inferred from visual input, but not when it was provided through language. ConclusionsCognitive disorganization disrupts the ability to build and use cognitive maps from visual input, while performance appeared preserved when structure was conveyed through language. These findings support the shallow cognitive map hypothesis and suggest that cognitive disorganization selectively disrupts the transformation of perceptual input into stable relational representations.