Cognitive Neuropsychiatric Models of Persecutory Delusions

Blackwood, Nigel; Howard, Robert; Bentall, Richard P.; Murray, Robin M.

doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.158.4.527

Cited by 257 publications

(175 citation statements)

References 188 publications

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“…This data gathering bias has consistently been shown in people with delusions (Blackwood, Howard, Bentall, & Murray, 2001;Bentall, Corcoran, Howard, Blackwood, & Kinderman, 2001;. Groups with specifically persecutory delusions have repeatedly shown the JTC bias, even those with diagnoses other than schizophrenia (Corcoran et al, 2008;Startup et al, 2008).…”

Section: Reasoning Bias: Jumping To Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Cognitive factors maintaining persecutory delusions in psychosis: The contribution of depression.

Vorontsova¹,

Garety²,

Freeman³

2013

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

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Depression is common in people with schizophrenia, but how it might directly contribute to the persistence of psychotic symptoms has rarely been tested. The key aim of the present study was to test whether depression and associated cognitive processes predict the maintenance of persecutory delusions. Three groups of participants were tested at baseline: 60 patients with persecutory delusions in the context of a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis, 30 patients with depression, and 30 nonclinical controls. They completed interviewer and self-report assessments of depression and paranoia, and measures of six cognitive factors (schematic beliefs, experiential avoidance, autobiographical memory, problem solving, rumination, worry style). The patients with persecutory delusions were then assessed again, six months later. It was found that 50% of the patients with persecutory delusions met diagnostic criteria for major depression. Cognitive processes found to be associated with depression across the groups were negative schematic beliefs about the self, experiential avoidance and rumination, but not autobiographical memory or problem solving. The severity of initial depression in patients with persecutory delusions predicted the persistence of paranoia over six months. A number of cognitive factors also predicted the persistence of persecutory delusions, including negative schematic beliefs about the self, worry, and problem-solving difficulties. In conclusion, depression is common in patients with current persecutory delusions, and it shows similar cognitive features to major depressive disorder. The results of this study indicate that depression and related processes may contribute to the maintenance of paranoia. Trials are warranted of depression-related therapeutic techniques for people with persecutory delusions.

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Section: Reasoning Bias: Jumping To Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Cognitive factors maintaining persecutory delusions in psychosis: The contribution of depression.

Vorontsova¹,

Garety²,

Freeman³

2013

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

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Section: Sense Of Agency Deficits In Schizophreniamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To date, the mechanisms accounting for the direction of attribution style remain to be revealed. It is possible that cognitive factors (Rössler and Lackus, 1986), recent life experiences (Bentall et al, 1991, Blackwood et al, 2001) and paradigm characteristics (van den Bos and Jeannerod, 2002) also play a role, in addition to the specific symptoms of schizophrenia.In contrast to previous studies, we did not detect differences in agency attribution between subjects 10 with-and without first-rank symptoms (Frith and Done, 1989, Daprati, et al, 1997) Several factors could account for this lack of effect: First, our patients were only mildly symptomatic at the time of testing, with possibly only minor agency attribution deficits (see Spence et al, 1997 for longitudinal data). Second, we cannot rule out that our paradigm was not sensitive enough to detect subtle or very specific differences between the two patient groups.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sense of agency and mentalizing: Dissociation of subdomains of social cognition in patients with schizophrenia

Schimansky

David

Rössler

et al. 2010

Psychiatry Research

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The sense of agency, i.e., the sense that "I am the one who is causing an action", and mentalizing, the ability to understand the mental states of other individuals, are key domains of social cognition. It has been hypothesized that an intact sense of agency is an important precondition for higher-level mentalizing abilities. A substantial body of evidence shows that both processes rely on similar brain areas and are severely impaired in schizophrenia, suggesting a close link between agency and mentalizing. Yet this relationship has not been explicitly tested. We investigated 40 individuals with schizophrenia and 40 healthy controls on an agency and mentalizing task. On the agency task, participants carried out simple mouse movements and judged the partially manipulated visual feedback as either self-or other-generated. On the mentalizing task, participants inferred mental states from pictures that depicted others' eyes ("Reading the mind in the eyes test"). Neuropsychological, psychopathological and social functioning levels were also evaluated. Both sense of agency and mentalizing were impaired in schizophrenia patients compared to healthy controls. However, testing for a relationship revealed no significant correlations between the two processes, either in the schizophrenia or the control group. The present findings demonstrate a dissociation of agency and mentalizing deficits in schizophrenia, suggesting that the multifaceted construct of social cognition consists of independent subdomains in healthy and psychiatrically ill individuals. AbstractThe sense of agency, i.e., the sense that "I am the one who is causing an action", and mentalizing, the ability to understand the mental states of other individuals, are key domains of social cognition. It has been hypothesized that an intact sense of agency is an important precondition for higher-level mentalizing abilities. A substantial body of evidence shows that both processes rely on similar brain areas and are severely impaired in schizophrenia, suggesting a close link between agency andmentalizing. Yet this relationship has not been explicitly tested. We investigated 40 individuals with schizophrenia and 40 healthy controls on an agency and mentalizing task. On the agency task, participants carried out simple mouse movements and judged the partially manipulated visual feedback as either self or other generated. On the mentalizing task, participants inferred mental states from pictures that depicted others' eyes ("Reading the Mind in the Eyes test"). Neuropsychological, psychopathological and social functioning levels were also evaluated.Both sense of agency and mentalizing were impaired in schizophrenics compared to healthy controls.However, testing for a relationship revealed no significant correlations between the two processes, either in the schizophrenia or the control group.The present findings demonstrate a dissociation of agency and mentalizing deficits in schizophrenia,suggesting that the multifaceted construct of social cognition consists of independ...

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“…This association becomes most clinically relevant when people are prone to making judgments about other people's actions that are abnormally harsh and disproportionate to the circumstance. This tendency is referred to as negative attribution bias (Blackwood, Howard, Bentall, & Murray, 2014;Kassinove & Sukhodolsky, 1995). A pilot study examining negative attribution bias in people with ABI found their attributions of others' actions to be more intentional, hostile and blameworthy compared to judgments made by healthy control peers .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perspective training to treat anger problems after brain injury: Two case studies

Winegardner

Keohane

Prince

et al. 2016

NRE

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Cognitive Neuropsychiatric Models of Persecutory Delusions

Cited by 257 publications

References 188 publications

Cognitive factors maintaining persecutory delusions in psychosis: The contribution of depression.

Cognitive factors maintaining persecutory delusions in psychosis: The contribution of depression.

Sense of agency and mentalizing: Dissociation of subdomains of social cognition in patients with schizophrenia

Perspective training to treat anger problems after brain injury: Two case studies

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