Pareidolia-proneness, reality discrimination errors, and visual hallucination-like experiences in a non-clinical sample

Smailes, David; Burdis, Emma; Gregoriou, Constantina; Fenton, Bryony; Dudley, Robert

doi:10.31234/osf.io/cf6z4

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…For face hallucinations (when internal, self-generated impressions are misattributed to external sources), appropriate visual input is not required. In line with this, in a nonclinical sample of young adults, levels of schizotypy do not correlate with face pareidolia 101 . Yet high positive schizotypy scores are associated with an increased tendency to perceive meaning in visual noise, i.e., with more liberal cognitive criteria to seeing faces 102 .…”

Section: Face Tuning In Schizophreniasupporting

confidence: 51%

Face pareidolia in male schizophrenia

et al. 2022

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Faces are valuable signals for efficient social interaction. Yet, social cognition including the sensitivity to a coarse face scheme may be deviant in schizophrenia (SZ). Tuning to faces in non-face images such as shadows, grilled toasts, or ink blots is termed face pareidolia. This phenomenon is poorly investigated in SZ. Here face tuning was assessed in 44 male participants with SZ and person-by-person matched controls by using recently created Face-n-Thing images (photographs of non-face objects to a varying degree resembling a face). The advantage of these images is that single components do not automatically trigger face processing. Participants were administered a set of images with upright and inverted (180° in the image plane) orientation. In a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm, they had to indicate whether an image resembled a face. The findings showed that: (i) With upright orientation, SZ patients exhibited deficits in face tuning: they provided much fewer face responses than controls. (ii) Inversion generally hindered face pareidolia. However, while in neurotypical males, inversion led to a drastic drop in face impression, in SZ, the impact of orientation was reduced. (iii) Finally, in accord with the signal detection theory analysis, the sensitivity index (d-prime) was lower in SZ, whereas no difference occurred in decision criterion. The outcome suggests altered face pareidolia in SZ is caused by lower face sensitivity rather than by alterations in cognitive bias. Comparison of these findings with earlier evidence confirms that tuning to social signals is lower in SZ, and warrants tailored brain imaging research.

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Section: Face Tuning In Schizophreniasupporting

confidence: 51%

Face pareidolia in male schizophrenia

et al. 2022

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“…Our results complement findings of a previous study reporting that pareidolia proneness is related to hallucination tendency in healthy individuals (Smailes et al, 2020). In the current study, where we examined both, hallucination and delusion tendency, we could show that the association with delusions is stronger and may be the actual primary driver behind the association with hallucinations.…”

Section: What Drives Pareidolia Pronenesssupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Eighty two healthy adult volunteers participated in the experiment (mean age: 23.78, SD: 3.29, 55 female). The number of participants was determined using a priori power analysis for detecting a correlation at p < 0.05 with a power of 80% or more, and considering effects found in previous studies with a similar sample size (Smailes et al, 2020). All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision (−0.5 diopters or better) and no history of neurological impairments or psychiatric disorders.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No common factor for illusory percepts, but a link between pareidolia and delusion tendency: A test of predictive coding theory

Lhotka

Ischebeck²,

Helmlinger³

et al. 2023

Front. Psychol.

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Predictive coding theory is an influential view of perception and cognition. It proposes that subjective experience of the sensory information results from a comparison between the sensory input and the top-down prediction about this input, the latter being critical for shaping the final perceptual outcome. The theory is able to explain a wide range of phenomena extending from sensory experiences such as visual illusions to complex pathological states such as hallucinations and psychosis. In the current study we aimed at testing the proposed connection between different phenomena explained by the predictive coding theory by measuring the manifestation of top-down predictions at progressing levels of complexity, starting from bistable visual illusions (alternating subjective experience of the same sensory input) and pareidolias (alternative meaningful interpretation of the sensory input) to self-reports of hallucinations and delusional ideations in everyday life. Examining the correlation structure of these measures in 82 adult healthy subjects revealed a positive association between pareidolia proneness and a tendency for delusional ideations, yet without any relationship to bistable illusions. These results show that only a subset of the phenomena that are explained by the predictive coding theory can be attributed to one common underlying factor. Our findings thus support the hierarchical view of predictive processing with independent top-down effects at the sensory and cognitive levels.

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“…This might imply that intentional inhibition not only underlies auditory hallucinations, but also those in the visual modality. Further research is needed to explore links between inhibition and hallucinations in specific modalities (for an example of this approach, see Aynsworth et al., 2017 , Smailes et al., 2018 ); the data presented here are merely suggestive of inhibition as a process relevant to hallucinations across a range of modalities. The results for the temporal context confusion score (and its apparently stronger relation to hallucination-proneness than intrusive thoughts) also highlight the need for taking into account contextual factors on the ICIM: we recommend that future studies using the task deploy the TCC as their primary outcome for individual differences analysis of hallucinatory traits, which would also align with the more recent use of similar continuous recognition tasks (e.g., Wahlen, Nahum, Gabriel, & Schnider, 2011 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intentional inhibition but not source memory is related to hallucination-proneness and intrusive thoughts in a university sample

Alderson-Day

Smailes

Moffatt

et al. 2019

Cortex

Self Cite

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Proneness to unusual perceptual states – such as auditory or visual hallucinations – has been proposed to exist on a continuum in the general population, but whether there is a cognitive basis for such a continuum remains unclear. Intentional cognitive inhibition (the ability to wilfully control thoughts and memories) is one mechanism that has been linked to auditory hallucination susceptibility, but most evidence to date has been drawn from clinical samples only. Moreover, such a link has yet to be demonstrated over and above relations to other cognitive skills (source monitoring) and cognitive states (intrusive thoughts) that often correlate with both inhibition and hallucinations. The present study deployed two tests of intentional inhibition ability – the Inhibition of Currently Irrelevant Memories (ICIM) task and Directed Forgetting (DF) task – and one test of source monitoring (a source memory task) to examine how cognitive task performance relates to self-reported i) auditory hallucination-proneness and ii) susceptibility to intrusive thoughts in a non-clinical student sample ( N = 76). Hierarchical regression analyses were used to assess the independent and combined contributions of task performance to proneness scores. ICIM performance but not DF or source memory scores were significantly related to both hallucination-proneness and intrusive thoughts. Further analysis suggested that intrusive thoughts may mediate the link between intentional inhibition skills and auditory hallucination-proneness, suggesting a potential pathway from inhibition to perception via intrusions in cognition. The implications for studying cognitive mechanisms of hallucination and their role in “continuum” views of psychosis-like experiences are discussed.

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Pareidolia-proneness, reality discrimination errors, and visual hallucination-like experiences in a non-clinical sample

Cited by 5 publications

References 8 publications

Face pareidolia in male schizophrenia

Face pareidolia in male schizophrenia

No common factor for illusory percepts, but a link between pareidolia and delusion tendency: A test of predictive coding theory

Intentional inhibition but not source memory is related to hallucination-proneness and intrusive thoughts in a university sample

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