Relationship Between Self-Focused Attention and Dissociation in Patients With and Without Auditory Hallucinations

Abstract

The purpose of this work was to study the relationship between self-focused attention and dissociative experiences in 4 groups of subjects: patients with a psychotic disorder who suffer from auditory hallucinations, patients with psychoses who have recovered from their hallucinations, patients with psychoses who have never had them, and a fourth nonclinical group. The private self-consciousness scale, revised version by Scheier and Carver, J Appl Soc Psychol. 1985;15:687-699, was used to measure self-focused attention, and the dissociative experience scale (DES-II, Bernstein and Putnam, J Nerv Ment Dis. 1986;174:727-735) was used for dissociation. The results showed that the attention of subjects with hallucinations was more self-focused than the nonclinical group, but did not differentiate significantly from groups of patients without hallucinations. On the other hand, patients with hallucinations and those recovered from them had a higher percentage of dissociative experiences than the rest of the groups in the total DES-II score and in its 3 factors, dissociative amnesia, depersonalization, and absorption. We also found a positive correlation between self-focusing and dissociative experiences in subjects with hallucinations. The depersonalization factor on the DES-II was the only factor predicting auditory hallucinations. The conclusions discuss the relevance of dissociative factors and self-focused attention to understanding the etiology of auditory hallucinations and their contributions to current cognitive models of hallucinations.

Relación entre trauma, disociación y síntomas psicóticos positivos

“…Estos resultados son coherentes con los obtenidos en otros estudios en los que encontraron, por un lado, una correlación positiva entre alucinaciones y delirios con disociación (PeronaGarcelán et al, 2010), y por otro, entre alucinaciones con absorción y despersonalización (Perona-Garcelán et al 2008. Estos resultados apoyan por un lado la hipótesis de que las alucinaciones auditivas pueden tener una base disociativa (Moskowitz y Corsten, 2007; Perona-Garcelán, Pérez-Álvarez, García-Montes y Cangas, 2015) y por otro, el papel que pueden tener la disociación como fuente de experiencias anómalas que favorece que la persona con psicosis las interprete de forma delirante (Garety et al, 2001).…”

“…Estos resultados son coincidentes con los de Kilcommons y Morrison (2005), y Perona-Garcelán y colaboradores (Perona-Garcelán et al, 2008;Perona-Garcelán, García-Montes, et al, 2012) en sujetos con psicosis y en Perona-Garcelán et al (2013) en sujetos sanos con propensión a las alucinaciones (junto con la absorción), lo cual viene a confirmar la importancia de las experiencias disociativas para la comprensión de las alucinaciones auditivas.…”

Trauma, Dissociation and Synthetic Metacognition in Schizophrenia

“…These patients also had more difficult course of the disease. Child abuse was specifically associated with positive symptoms and namely hallucinations (Perona-Garcelan et al, 2008;Read et al, 2005;Ross et al, 1994), higher levels of anxiety (Lysaker  Salyers, 2007), suicidal behavior (Roy, 2005), poorer psychosocial functioning and work performance (Lysaker et al, 2001, Lysaker et al, 2004. Janssen et al (2004) showed in a prospective study that childhood abuse is a risk factor for becoming psychotic in a later time and this relationship is dose-dependent.…”

Hearing voices, dissociation, and the self: A functional-analytic perspective

“…Kilcommons & Morrison, 2005;Ross & Keyes, 2004;Moskowitz, Schafer, & Dorahy, 2008;Dorahy et al, 2009). For example, there is evidence that individuals with hallucinations have more dissociative experiences than those with a diagnosis of psychosis without hallucinations (Perona-Garcelán et al, 2008;Varese, Udachina, Myin-Germeys, Oorschot, & Bentall, 2011). There is also evidence that depersonalisation and absorption are more prevalent in individuals with hallucinations and hallucination proneness (Altman, Collins, & Mundy, 1997;Morrison & Petersen, 2003).…”