“Theory of mind”, persecutory delusions and the somatic marker mechanism

Walston, Florence; Blennerhassett, Richard; Charlton, Bruce G.

doi:10.1080/13546800050083511

Cited by 46 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…In particular, in patients who showed symptom awareness, misattribution of those symptoms to causes other than mental illness was related to better mentalising. This might indicate that in order to misattribute one needs to have mentalising abilities to some extent, and is in line with the suggestion that mentalising is a prerequisite for delusional thought Walston, Blennerhassett, & Charlton, 2000). These results might also be revealing in that patients with symptom awareness who at the same time are aware of the mental states of others (ToM), may feel resistant to labelling their own experiences as mental illness, since that would be harmful to their self image, and their assumed image in the eyes of others, thus leading to denial (e.g., .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 49%

“…In addition, findings might have been obscured due to the fact that the score on symptom unawareness is the mean of scores obtained for different symptoms, which may individually relate differently to mentalising. For example delusions tend to be associated by definition with symptom unawareness, while they have also been related to intact mentalising skills (e.g., Walston et al, 2000) and attributional biases (e.g., . In contrast, negative symptoms may be more commonly acknowledged by patients but have been consistently associated to poor ToM (e.g., .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, it has been argued that because groups of patients with persecutory delusions tend to be less cognitively impaired than groups of negative or disorganized patients, they might use general cognitive strategies to compensate in solving ToM tasks ). Alternatively, it has been suggested that instead of ToM deficits per se, delusional patients may over-attribute mental states to others or "overmentalise", which would explain their normal performance on ToM tasks Walston et al, 2000). In spite of contradictory findings, from a theoretical basis, the most intuitive view continues to be that ToM deficits should be related to paranoid delusions since they are by definition alterations in the process of attributing mental states.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Alternatively, it has also been suggested that instead of ToM deficits, delusional patients tend to over-attribute mental states to others or "overmentalise", which would explain their intact performance on ToM tasks Walston et al, 2000).…”

Section: Tom and Symptomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example delusions tend to be associated by definition with symptom unawareness and have been associated with increased misattribution (Cuesta et al, 1998, Kemp & Lambert, 1995, while they have also been related to intact mentalising skills (e.g. Abu-Akel and Bailey, 2000; Walston et al, 2000) and attributional biases (e.g. McKay, .…”

Section: Lack Of a Linear Relationship Between Insight And Tom Measurmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Exploratory Study of the Association Between Insight and Theory of Mind (Tom) in Stable Schizophrenia Patients

Pousa¹,

Duñó²,

Navarro³

et al. 2008

Schizophrenia Research

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 49%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Tom and Symptomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Lack Of a Linear Relationship Between Insight And Tom Measurmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Exploratory Study of the Association Between Insight and Theory of Mind (Tom) in Stable Schizophrenia Patients

Pousa¹,

Duñó²,

Navarro³

et al. 2008

Schizophrenia Research

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Psychological processes and paranoia: implications for forensic behavioural science

Bentall

Taylor²

2006

Behavioral Sci & The Law

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Paranoid delusions have recently become the focus of empirical research. In this article, we review studies of the psychological mechanisms that might be involved in paranoid thinking and discuss their implications for forensic behaviour science. Paranoia has not been consistently associated with any specific neuropsychological abnormality. However, evidence supports three broad types of mechanism that might be involved in delusional thinking in general and paranoia in particular: anomalous perceptual experiences, abnormal reasoning, and motivational factors. There is some evidence that paranoia may be associated with hearing loss, and good evidence that paranoid patients attend excessively to threatening information. Although general reasoning ability seems to be unaffected, there is strong evidence that a jumping- to-conclusions style of reasoning about data is implicated in delusions in general, but less consistent evidence specifically linking paranoia to impaired theory of mind. Finally, there appears to be a strong association between paranoia and negative self-esteem, and some evidence that attempts to protect self-esteem by attributing negative events to external causes are implicated. Some of these processes have recently been implicated in violent behaviour, and they therefore have the potential to explain the apparent association between paranoid delusions and offending.

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Social cognition and psychopathology: a critical overview

Gallagher

Varga

2015

World Psychiatry

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The philosophical and interdisciplinary debate about the nature of social cognition, and the processes involved, has important implications for psychiatry. On one account, mindreading depends on making theoretical inferences about another person's mental states based on knowledge of folk psychology, the so-called "theory theory" (TT). On a different account, "simulation theory" (ST), mindreading depends on simulating the other's mental states within one's own mental or motor system. A third approach, "interaction theory" (IT), looks to embodied processes (involving movement, gesture, facial expression, vocal intonation, etc.) and the dynamics of intersubjective interactions (joint attention, joint action, and processes not confined to an individual system) in highly contextualized situations to explain social cognition, and disruptions of these processes in some psychopathological conditions. In this paper, we present a brief summary of these three theoretical frameworks (TT, ST, IT). We then focus on impaired social abilities in autism and schizophrenia from the perspective of the three approaches. We discuss the limitations of such approaches in the scientific studies of these and other pathologies, and we close with a short reflection on the future of the field. In this regard we argue that, to the extent that TT, ST and IT offer explanations that capture different (limited) aspects of social cognition, a pluralist approach might be best.

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“Theory of mind”, persecutory delusions and the somatic marker mechanism

Cited by 46 publications

References 8 publications

Exploratory Study of the Association Between Insight and Theory of Mind (Tom) in Stable Schizophrenia Patients

Exploratory Study of the Association Between Insight and Theory of Mind (Tom) in Stable Schizophrenia Patients

Psychological processes and paranoia: implications for forensic behavioural science

Social cognition and psychopathology: a critical overview

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