The placement of anomalous self-experiences within schizotypal personality in a nonclinical sample

Anomalous self-experiences are disturbances in the subjective experience of the self and have been shown to be related to the premorbid, prodromal, acute, and chronic phases of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Despite having a long history in psychopathology research, anomalous self-experiences are not explicitly represented in any major nosology of mental disorders. Previous research suggests that anomalous self-experiences are correlated, but distinct from other aspects of schizotypal personality, but this has not been examined with confirmatory factor analysis. The current research aimed to examine where anomalous self-experiences fit within the structure of schizotypal personality including cognitive-perceptual, interpersonal, disorganized, and paranoid factors. It also examined the measurement invariance of the factor structure across ethnicity and between sexes. Seven hundred forty-four participants completed multiple measures of anomalous self-experiences and schizotypal personality. The best fitting model was a five-factor model with anomalous self-experiences, cognitive-perceptual, interpersonal, disorganized, and paranoid factors. This model fit better than models with anomalous self-experiences loading on any of the four schizotypal personality factors. The structure had configural, metric, and scalar invariance across race/ethnicities, but lacked scalar invariance between sexes. Anomalous self-experience scores did not differ among race/ethnicity or between sexes. These results suggest that anomalous self-experiences are highly correlated with but distinct from other facets of schizotypal personality. Future research may examine whether anomalous self-experiences should be added to nosologies of psychotic-spectrum disorders.