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Voice identity recognition failure in patients with schizophrenia
Lucy Alba-Ferrara1, Susanne Weis, Ljubica Damjanovic
1Roskamp Laboratory of Brain Development, Modulation and Repair, Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences, Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida, 3515 E Fletcher Avenue, Tampa, FL 33613, USA. lalbafer@health.usf.edu
The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
|August 28, 2012
Summary
Schizophrenia patients, especially those with auditory verbal hallucinations, show impaired voice recognition due to decreased sensitivity. This difficulty may explain why hallucinations sound like external voices.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Psychiatry
- Clinical psychology
Background:
- Cognitive models suggest auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) stem from misidentifying inner speech.
- These models struggle to explain hallucinated voices with distinct identities.
- A potential deficit in general voice identity recognition in schizophrenia requires investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate voice identity recognition in schizophrenia patients.
- To determine if impaired voice recognition relates to auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH).
Main Methods:
- Twenty-five schizophrenia patients and 13 healthy controls participated.
- Participants completed a famous voice recognition task.
- Signal detection theory analyzed perceptual sensitivity and response criteria.
Main Results:
- Schizophrenia patients exhibited lower perceptual sensitivity in recognizing famous voices compared to controls.
- No significant group differences were found in false alarm rates or response criteria.
- Patients with AVH demonstrated particularly poor performance on the voice recognition task.
Conclusions:
- Schizophrenia patients, particularly those experiencing AVH, have a deficit in voice identity recognition.
- This impairment is linked to reduced perceptual sensitivity.
- The findings suggest that impaired voice recognition may contribute to the misattribution of inner speech in AVH.
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