Fyfe Sophie, Williams Claire, Mason Oliver J, Pickup Graham J
Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology, University College London, UK.
Cortex. 2008 Nov-Dec;44(10):1316-25. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2007.07.009. Epub 2008 Jun 5.
Impaired ability to correctly infer others' mental states ('Theory of Mind' - ToM) and the tendency to perceive meaning in unrelated events ('apophenia') have been implicated in vulnerability to schizophrenia. Sixty-three healthy participants completed three experimental tasks that provided indices of ToM and apophenia. The first task (Contingency) required participants to rate the strength of relationship between the movements of two shapes; in some conditions the movements were unrelated, in others the movement of one shape was contingent on that of the other. In the second task (Stories), participants answered questions on short stories with 'random', 'physical' or 'ToM' themes. The third task (Triangles) required participants to view and then describe the movement of triangles on a computer screen in 'random', 'physical' and 'ToM' conditions. Participants completed questionnaire measures of psychosis-proneness (the Schizotypal Personality Scale - STA) and delusional thinking style (Peters et al. Delusions Inventory - PDI-21). Little evidence was found on any of the tasks for an association between a specific deficit in ToM accuracy and any aspect of psychosis-proneness. On the Triangles task, schizotypal and delusion-prone participants spontaneously reported perceiving a greater number of associations in the random condition (apophenia). On both the Triangles and Contingency tasks, over-mentalizing was found to be associated with delusional thinking but not with general schizotypy. We speculate that over-mentalizing may be underpinned by a hyper-associative cognitive style, linked to an exaggeration of the normal human tendency to attribute mental states, rather than to dysfunction in the assessment of causality. Perceiving meaning in randomness and, more particularly, attributing mental states where none are indicated, may be important factors in the formation of paranormal and delusional beliefs.
正确推断他人心理状态的能力受损（“心理理论”——ToM）以及在无关事件中感知意义的倾向（“关联错觉”）被认为与精神分裂症的易感性有关。63名健康参与者完成了三项实验任务，这些任务提供了ToM和关联错觉的指标。第一项任务（偶然性）要求参与者对两个形状的运动之间的关系强度进行评分；在某些情况下，运动是无关的，在其他情况下，一个形状的运动取决于另一个形状的运动。在第二项任务（故事）中，参与者回答关于具有“随机”“物理”或“心理理论”主题的短篇小说的问题。第三项任务（三角形）要求参与者在“随机”“物理”和“心理理论”条件下观看并描述计算机屏幕上三角形的运动。参与者完成了精神病倾向（分裂型人格量表——STA）和妄想思维方式（彼得斯等人的妄想量表——PDI - 21）的问卷调查。在任何一项任务中，几乎没有证据表明ToM准确性的特定缺陷与精神病倾向的任何方面之间存在关联。在三角形任务中，分裂型和易产生妄想的参与者在随机条件下自发报告感知到更多的关联（关联错觉）。在三角形任务和偶然性任务中，过度心理化都与妄想思维有关，但与一般的分裂型人格无关。我们推测，过度心理化可能由一种超联想认知风格支撑，这种风格与正常人类归因心理状态倾向的夸大有关，而不是与因果关系评估功能障碍有关。在随机性中感知意义，尤其是在没有表明心理状态的情况下归因心理状态，可能是形成超自然和妄想信念的重要因素。
