Correlates of Hallucinatory Experiences in the General Population: An International Multisite Replication Study

Abstract

Hallucinatory experiences can occur in both clinical and nonclinical groups. However, in previous studies of the general population, investigations of the cognitive mechanisms underlying hallucinatory experiences have yielded inconsistent results. We ran a large-scale preregistered multisite study, in which general-population participants ( N = 1,394 across 11 data-collection sites and online) completed assessments of hallucinatory experiences, a measure of adverse childhood experiences, and four tasks: source memory, dichotic listening, backward digit span, and auditory signal detection. We found that hallucinatory experiences were associated with a higher false-alarm rate on the signal detection task and a greater number of reported adverse childhood experiences but not with any of the other cognitive measures employed. These findings are an important step in improving reproducibility in hallucinations research and suggest that the replicability of some findings regarding cognition in clinical samples needs to be investigated.

Item-specific overlap between hallucinatory experiences and cognition in the general population: A three-step multivariate analysis of international multi-site data

“…As part of a larger study (Moseley et al, 2021), data from 647 participants were collected in person at one of 11 data collection sites: Durham University, University of Roehampton, King's College London, University College London, University of Cambridge (all UK), University Paul Val ery (France), University of Groningen (Netherlands), Charles University (Czech Republic), University of Bergen (Norway), University of British Columbia (Canada), and Swinburne University (Australia). Data were also collected for a subset of tasks on 866 participants online, but were not included in the present analysis, because not all tasks of interest (namely, auditory signal detection) were collected online, and the multivariate nature of the current analysis required all subjects to have all measures.…”

“…This proposed continuum presents an accessible opportunity to investigate the cognitive mechanisms underpinning HEs in a healthy sample, avoiding the potential influence of antipsychotic medications, stigma, and institutionalization. Candidate underpinning cognitive mechanisms include dysfunctional source monitoring, heightened signal detection, impaired attentional processes, and cortical hyperactivity (Braithwaite et al, 2013;Fong et al, 2019;Moseley et al, 2021). Through this approach, researchers can develop mechanistic models to better understand distressing or disabling experiences and assist in developing interventions based on the recognition that pathological hallucinations can be understood as extreme versions of healthy cognitive biases.…”

“…In order to bring clarity to the literature using a standardized protocol and a large sample size, Moseley et al (2021) carried out a pre-registered international multisite study (N ¼ 1394) to investigate the link between the aforementioned theoretically and empirically important measures of cognition and HEs. Using an online protocol, non-clinical participants performed source monitoring, dichotic listening, backwards digit span, matrix reasoning, and auditory signal detection tasks; along with assessments of HEs with the 32 items of the Cardiff Anomalous Perceptions Scale (CAPS; Bell et al, 2006) and the 16 items of the Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale -Extended (LSHS-E; Larøi & Van Der Linden, 2005) across 11 data collection centers.…”

“…The published, preregistered study that provided the data for this work (Moseley et al, 2021) measured HEs by summing scores for all items on the CAPS, and four hypotheses were preregistered for how each domain of cognition would relate to this summary scale. The purpose of pre-registering hypotheses, and using only one summed-score predictor variable for HEs, was to avoid publishing Type I errors (false positives) by limiting the number of statistical tests performed.…”

“…The purpose of pre-registering hypotheses, and using only one summed-score predictor variable for HEs, was to avoid publishing Type I errors (false positives) by limiting the number of statistical tests performed. The current study uses a subset of the data published by Moseley et al (2021), but instead of controlling Type I errors by preregistration and computing one summary variable, an exploratory approach involving a three-step statistical method is used to uncover associations between cognition and HEs at individual item level.…”