Discipline of Psychology, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2021 Jul;74(7):1153-1163. doi: 10.1177/1747021820982256. Epub 2021 Jan 10.
Among neurocognitive accounts of delusions, there is a growing consensus that it is the certainty with which delusions are held, rather than their content that defines some beliefs as delusional. On a continuum model of psychosis, this inappropriate certainty ought to be present (albeit in an attenuated form) in healthy adults who score highly in schizotypy. It was hypothesised that this might be most evident in circumstances where the environment provides incomplete or probabilistic information, which thereby forces the participant to hold two imperfectly supported, concurrent hypotheses in mind. A cued visual search task was used to measure people's capacity to use partially predictive information (i.e., a cue that predicted the target may occur in one of the two locations) to facilitate speeded responding. As hypothesised, people's performance on the trials that required holding two hypotheses in mind concurrently was significantly and specifically associated with the positive components of schizotypy. This finding is consistent with a hyperfocusing of attention in schizophrenia, and may help explain why delusion-prone individuals have a tendency to "jump to conclusions" or be resistant to disconfirming information when faced with multiple, partially supported hypotheses.
在神经认知妄想的解释中，越来越多的人认为，决定某些信念是否属于妄想的，不是其内容，而是人们对这些信念的确信程度。在精神病连续性模型中，高分的精神分裂特质个体尽管程度较轻，也应该存在这种不恰当的确信。本研究假设，在环境提供不完整或概率信息的情况下，这种情况最为明显，从而迫使参与者同时考虑两个支持度不完美的假设。提示视觉搜索任务用于衡量人们使用部分预测信息（即提示可能在两个位置之一出现的目标）来促进快速反应的能力。正如假设的那样，需要同时考虑两个假设的情况下参与者的表现与精神分裂特质的阳性成分显著且具体相关。这一发现与精神分裂症中注意力的过度集中一致，可能有助于解释为什么容易产生妄想的个体在面对多个部分支持的假设时，往往会“草率下结论”或对否定信息持抵制态度。
