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Latent inhibition (LI) refers to the retarded acquisition of a conditioned response that occurs if the subject being tested is first preexposed to the to-be-conditioned stimulus (CS) without the paired unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Because the ‘irrelevance’ of the to-be-conditioned stimulus is established during non-contingent preexposure, the slowed acquisition of the CS-UCS association is thought to reflect the process of overcoming this learned irrelevance. Latent inhibition has been reported to be diminished in acutely hospitalized schizophrenia patients. If acutely hospitalized schizophrenia patients are preexposed to the CS, they learn the association as fast as, and perhaps faster than, patients who are not preexposed to the CS. This finding has been interpreted as reflecting the inability of acute schizophrenia patients to ignore irrelevant stimuli. In this study, the LI paradigm was identical to the one used in previous …