Correlates of Hallucinatory Experiences in the General Population: An International Multisite Replication Study

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psychopathology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Hallucinatory experiences occur in both clinical and nonclinical populations.
• Previous research on cognitive mechanisms of hallucinations in the general population yielded inconsistent results, highlighting a need for reproducible studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying hallucinatory experiences in a large, general-population sample.
• To examine the association between hallucinatory experiences, adverse childhood experiences, and performance on specific cognitive tasks.

Main Methods:

• A large-scale, preregistered, multisite study involving 1,394 general-population participants.
• Participants completed assessments of hallucinatory experiences, adverse childhood experiences, and four cognitive tasks: source memory, dichotic listening, backward digit span, and auditory signal detection.

Main Results:

• Hallucinatory experiences were significantly associated with a higher false-alarm rate on the auditory signal detection task.
• A greater number of reported adverse childhood experiences was also associated with hallucinatory experiences.
• No significant associations were found between hallucinatory experiences and source memory, dichotic listening, or backward digit span performance.

Conclusions:

• These findings suggest that altered signal detection and a history of adverse childhood experiences are cognitive correlates of hallucinatory experiences in the general population.
• The study emphasizes the importance of reproducibility in hallucinations research and suggests re-evaluating cognitive findings from clinical samples in broader populations.