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Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals

According to the predictive coding theory of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions are explained by an overweighing of high-level prior expectations relative to sensory information that leads to false perceptions of meaningful signals. However, it is currently unclear whether the hypothesized over...

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Autores principales: Stuke, Heiner, Kress, Elisabeth, Weilnhammer, Veith Andreas, Sterzer, Philipp, Schmack, Katharina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8061414/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33897518
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.583637
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author Stuke, Heiner
Kress, Elisabeth
Weilnhammer, Veith Andreas
Sterzer, Philipp
Schmack, Katharina
author_facet Stuke, Heiner
Kress, Elisabeth
Weilnhammer, Veith Andreas
Sterzer, Philipp
Schmack, Katharina
author_sort Stuke, Heiner
collection PubMed
description According to the predictive coding theory of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions are explained by an overweighing of high-level prior expectations relative to sensory information that leads to false perceptions of meaningful signals. However, it is currently unclear whether the hypothesized overweighing of priors (1) represents a pervasive alteration that extends to the visual modality and (2) takes already effect at early automatic processing stages. Here, we addressed these questions by studying visual perception of socially meaningful stimuli in healthy individuals with varying degrees of psychosis proneness (n = 39). In a first task, we quantified participants’ prior for detecting faces in visual noise using a Bayesian decision model. In a second task, we measured participants’ prior for detecting direct gaze stimuli that were rendered invisible by continuous flash suppression. We found that the prior for detecting faces in noise correlated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.50, p = 0.001, Bayes factor 1/20.1) as well as delusion proneness (r = 0.46, p = 0.003, BF 1/9.4). The prior for detecting invisible direct gaze was significantly associated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.43, p = 0.009, BF 1/3.8) but not conclusively with delusion proneness (r = 0.30, p = 0.079, BF 1.7). Our results provide evidence for the idea that overly strong high-level priors for automatically detecting socially meaningful stimuli might constitute a processing alteration in psychosis.
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spelling pubmed-80614142021-04-23 Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals Stuke, Heiner Kress, Elisabeth Weilnhammer, Veith Andreas Sterzer, Philipp Schmack, Katharina Front Psychol Psychology According to the predictive coding theory of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions are explained by an overweighing of high-level prior expectations relative to sensory information that leads to false perceptions of meaningful signals. However, it is currently unclear whether the hypothesized overweighing of priors (1) represents a pervasive alteration that extends to the visual modality and (2) takes already effect at early automatic processing stages. Here, we addressed these questions by studying visual perception of socially meaningful stimuli in healthy individuals with varying degrees of psychosis proneness (n = 39). In a first task, we quantified participants’ prior for detecting faces in visual noise using a Bayesian decision model. In a second task, we measured participants’ prior for detecting direct gaze stimuli that were rendered invisible by continuous flash suppression. We found that the prior for detecting faces in noise correlated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.50, p = 0.001, Bayes factor 1/20.1) as well as delusion proneness (r = 0.46, p = 0.003, BF 1/9.4). The prior for detecting invisible direct gaze was significantly associated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.43, p = 0.009, BF 1/3.8) but not conclusively with delusion proneness (r = 0.30, p = 0.079, BF 1.7). Our results provide evidence for the idea that overly strong high-level priors for automatically detecting socially meaningful stimuli might constitute a processing alteration in psychosis. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-04-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8061414/ /pubmed/33897518 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.583637 Text en Copyright © 2021 Stuke, Kress, Weilnhammer, Sterzer and Schmack. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Stuke, Heiner
Kress, Elisabeth
Weilnhammer, Veith Andreas
Sterzer, Philipp
Schmack, Katharina
Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals
title Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals
title_full Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals
title_fullStr Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals
title_full_unstemmed Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals
title_short Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals
title_sort overly strong priors for socially meaningful visual signals are linked to psychosis proneness in healthy individuals
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8061414/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33897518
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.583637
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