Delusions and the tilt illusion K Seymour1, T Stein2, T Rusch3, M Sekutowicz4, P Sterzer5 |
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1Macquarie University, Australia |
| Contextual processing deficits have been considered to underlie many of the cognitive impairments associated with Schizophrenia. For instance a failure of context to guide processing has been attributed to the emergence of delusional beliefs (e.g. Frith, 1979). Here we examined delusional ideation in a healthy and clinical population to examine whether the extent of one’s susceptibility to the context-dependent tilt illusion relates to one’s propensity to experience delusional thought. Our study reports a significant difference in tilt illusion magnitude between patients and controls, with patients exhibiting stronger repulsion effects. Furthermore, we found evidence for a significant correlation between the strength of this contextual effect and a subject’s measure of delusional ideation. These results reinforce the idea of the schizotypal nervous system (e.g. Claridge and Hewitt, 1987) and the proposal that contextual processing abnormalities are the manifestation of a larger disturbance of cognitive coordination in schizotypy and schizophrenia (e.g. Uhlaas et al., 2004). |
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