Predictive Inference Alterations in Psychosis Proneness Show Task-Dependent Signatures

Area of Science:

• Cognitive neuroscience
• Psychology of perception
• Clinical psychology

Background:

• Perception integrates sensory input with prior expectations.
• Disruptions in this inferential process are linked to psychosis.
• Subclinical psychosis-like experiences (PLEs) may share similar perceptual alterations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if psychosis-like experiences (PLEs) alter perceptual inference in healthy adults.
• To examine how PLEs affect sensory evidence weighting and reliance on probabilistic cues.
• To explore task-dependent manifestations of altered history biases in individuals with high PLEs.

Main Methods:

• Two independent samples of healthy adults performed visual detection and motion discrimination tasks.
• Mixed-effects models analyzed the influence of PLE scores on evidence weighting and cue reliance.
• Signal detection analyses assessed perceptual sensitivity and response bias shifts.
• History biases, reflecting the influence of recent experience, were quantified.

Main Results:

• Higher PLE scores correlated with reduced sensory evidence weighting and increased reliance on probabilistic cues.
• Individuals with higher PLEs exhibited reduced perceptual sensitivity and increased cue-dependent response bias shifts.
• History biases differed by task: attenuated repulsive bias from previous stimuli in detection, but repulsive bias from previous choices in discrimination.

Conclusions:

• Psychosis-like traits differentially impact the utilization of past information across perceptual contexts.
• Findings suggest a broader inferential vulnerability along the psychosis continuum.
• Altered perceptual inference in PLEs may reflect a fundamental difference in how prior experience shapes perception.