Evidence of absence: no relationship between behaviourally measured prediction error response and schizotypy

Introduction: The predictive processing framework has attracted much interest in the field of schizophrenia research in recent years, with an increasing number of studies also carried out in healthy individuals with nonclinical psychosis-like experiences. The current research adopted a continuum approach to psychosis and aimed to investigate different types of prediction error responses in relation to psychometrically defined schizotypy. Methods: One hundred and two healthy volunteers underwent a battery of behavioural tasks including (a) a force-matching task, (b) a Kamin blocking task, and (c) a reversal learning task together with three questionnaires measuring domains of schizotypy from different approaches. Results: Neither frequentist nor Bayesian statistical methods supported the notion that alterations in prediction error responses were related to schizotypal traits in any of the three tasks. Conclusions: These null results suggest that deficits in predictive processing associated with clinical states of psychosis are not always present in healthy individuals with schizotypal traits.