4.1.1. Overt blocks: constant and very high amount of visual information

All experiments: both groups performed well on the task when the amount of visual information was very high in both the baseline and bias sessions (all mean correct responses percentage > 96%, S.D.<3.4 in healthy participants, and mean > 94%, S.D.<4.1 in schizophrenic patients). These high percentage of correct responses revealed that, as expected, participants did easily recognize the different intentions represented, and by consequence, did integrate the effective probability distribution of each type of (preferred vs. non-preferred) intentions within each (baseline and bias) session.

The figure 3 illustrates the temporal course of patients’ RTs over both the sessions: as predicted, the bias was found in the bias session to have a cumulative effect over time, with RTs for preferred intentions progressively decreasing from the first to the last third of the session in all experiments (all p<.05).

Fig. 3. Schizophrenic patients: Mean reaction times (± SD) for the non-preferred and the preferred intentions across time in the OVERT blocks (baseline and bias sessions). 1st: the first three overt blocks of the session; 2nd: the three intermediate blocks; and 3rd: the three last blocks of the session.