Scheunemann Jakob, Fischer Rabea, Moritz Steffen
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
Front Psychiatry. 2021 Mar 4;12:612810. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.612810. eCollection 2021.
Individuals with psychotic-like experiences and psychosis gather and use information differently than controls; in particular they seek and rely on less information or over-weight currently available information. A new paradigm, the judge-advisor system, has previously been used to investigate these processes. Results showed that psychosis-prone individuals tend to seek less advice but at the same time use the available advice more. Some theoretical models, like the hypersalience of evidence-matching hypothesis, predict that psychosis-prone individuals weight recently available information to a greater extent and thus provide an explanation for increased advice-weighting scores in psychosis-prone individuals. To test this model, we adapted the previously used judge-advisor system by letting participants receive consecutively multiple pieces of advice. To meet this aim, we recruited a large MTurk community sample ( = 1,396), which we split in a group with high levels of psychotic-like experiences (at least 2 above the mean, = 80) and a group with low levels of psychotic-like experiences (maximum 0.5 above the mean, = 1,107), using the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences' positive subscale. First, participants estimated five people's age based on photographs. Then, they received consecutive advice in the form of manipulated age estimates by allegedly previous participants, with outliers in some trials. After each advice, participants could adjust their estimate. This procedure allowed us to investigate how participants weighted each currently presented advice. In addition to being more confident in their final estimates and in line with our preregistered hypothesis, participants with more frequent psychotic-like experiences did weight currently available advice more than participants with less frequent psychotic-like experiences. This effect was especially pronounced in response to outliers, as fine-grained analysis suggested. Result thus support models predicting an overcorrection in response to new incoming information and challenges an assumed general belief inflexibility in people with psychotic experiences.
有类精神病体验和精神病的个体收集和使用信息的方式与对照组不同；特别是，他们寻求和依赖的信息较少，或者过度重视当前可用的信息。一种新的范式，即判断-顾问系统，此前已被用于研究这些过程。结果表明，易患精神病的个体倾向于寻求更少的建议，但同时更多地使用可用的建议。一些理论模型，如证据匹配假设的超显著性模型，预测易患精神病的个体在更大程度上重视最近可用的信息，从而为易患精神病的个体中建议权重得分增加提供了解释。为了检验这个模型，我们对之前使用的判断-顾问系统进行了调整，让参与者连续收到多条建议。为了实现这一目标，我们招募了一个来自亚马逊土耳其机器人社区的大样本（N = 1396），我们使用精神体验社区评估的积极子量表，将其分为一组有高水平类精神病体验的个体（至少比平均值高2个标准差，n = 80）和一组有低水平类精神病体验的个体（最高比平均值高0.5个标准差，n = 1107）。首先，参与者根据照片估计五个人的年龄。然后，他们以据称是之前参与者操纵的年龄估计的形式连续收到建议，在一些试验中有异常值。每次收到建议后，参与者可以调整他们的估计。这个程序使我们能够研究参与者如何权衡每个当前给出的建议。除了对最终估计更有信心并且符合我们预先注册的假设之外，有更频繁类精神病体验的参与者确实比有较不频繁类精神病体验的参与者更重视当前可用的建议。正如细粒度分析所表明的，这种效应在对异常值的反应中尤为明显。因此，结果支持了预测对新传入信息进行过度校正的模型，并挑战了一种关于有精神病体验的人普遍存在信念僵化的假设。
