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Testing continuum models of psychosis: No reduction in source monitoring ability in healthy individuals prone to auditory hallucinations.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Garrison, Jane R 
Moseley, Peter 
Alderson-Day, Ben 
Smailes, David 
Fernyhough, Charles 

Abstract

People with schizophrenia who hallucinate show impairments in reality monitoring (the ability to distinguish internally generated information from information obtained from external sources) compared to non-hallucinating patients and healthy individuals. While this may be explained at least in part by an increased externalizing bias, it remains unclear whether this impairment is specific to reality monitoring, or whether it also reflects a general deficit in the monitoring of self-generated information (internal source monitoring). Much interest has focused recently on continuum models of psychosis which argue that hallucination-proneness is distributed in clinical and non-clinical groups, but few studies have directly investigated reality monitoring and internal source monitoring abilities in healthy individuals with a proneness to hallucinations. Two experiments are presented here: the first (N = 47, with participants selected for hallucination-proneness from a larger sample of 677 adults) found no evidence of an impairment or externalizing bias on a reality monitoring task in hallucination-prone individuals; the second (N = 124) found no evidence of atypical performance on an internal source monitoring task in hallucination-prone individuals. The significance of these findings is reviewed in light of the clinical evidence and the implications for models of hallucination generation discussed.

Description

Keywords

Auditory verbal hallucinations, Internal source monitoring, Reality monitoring, Schizophrenia, Adult, Auditory Cortex, Female, Hallucinations, Humans, Male, Psychotic Disorders, Reality Testing, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenic Psychology, Task Performance and Analysis

Journal Title

Cortex

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0010-9452
1973-8102

Volume Title

91

Publisher

Elsevier BV
Sponsorship
Medical Research Council (G0001354)
Medical Research Council (G1000183)
JRG was supported by a University of Cambridge Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute studentship, funded by a joint award from the UK Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. PM, BA-D, DS, and CF were supported by a Wellcome Trust Collaborative award. JSS was supported by a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar award.