Cross-Modality Evidence for Reduced Choice History Biases in Psychosis-Prone Individuals.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Psychiatric Research

Background:

• Predictive processing theories suggest perception arises from hierarchical cortical inference.
• Aberrant weighting of prior information versus sensory input is linked to psychotic experiences like hallucinations and delusions.
• Previous perceptual choices serve as a source of prior information in decision-making.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between choice history biases in perceptual decision-making and psychosis proneness.
• To examine if psychosis proneness is associated with altered weighting of past choices in perception.
• To explore potential compensatory mechanisms in psychosis-prone individuals.

Main Methods:

• Assessed choice history biases in perceptual decision-making tasks using auditory and visual stimuli.
• Investigated adaptation of these biases to experimentally manipulated stimulus dependencies.
• Explored reliance on predictive cross-modal cues as a compensatory strategy.

Main Results:

• Psychosis proneness was significantly associated with decreased choice history biases across both auditory and visual tasks.
• This association held true regardless of the presence or absence of stimulus serial dependencies.
• No consistent evidence was found for a compensatory role of predictive cue information.

Conclusions:

• Reduced choice history biases are a characteristic of psychosis proneness.
• The findings support predictive processing models linking aberrant prior weighting to psychosis.
• Data did not unequivocally support a compensatory mechanism involving explicit cue information.