Jumping to conclusions (JTC) has been proposed as an aetiological factor involved in the formation of delusions from the earliest stages. A number of researchers have thus shifted their focus to include the study of subclinical populations. Expanding on these studies, 17 delusion-prone and 22 control students completed four versions of the beads-in-a-jar paradigm (including multiple jar variant...

The objectives of the present study were to examine the degree of co-existence of hallucinations and delusions in the nonclinical population. In addition, we wished to investigate the role of metacognitions in hallucinations and delusions. Finally, we explored the relative roles of positive and negative metacognitive beliefs in proneness to hallucinations and delusions. Three hundred and thirty...

An experiment was carried out designed primarily to test A B Joseph's suggestion that patients with Capgras delusion may have problems integrating information between the two cortical hemispheres; and at the same time it was meant to examine J Cutting's ideas linking schizophrenia in general, and the Capgras delusion in particular, to right hemisphere dysfunction. Three patients with the Capgra...

Many studies have found that people experiencing persecutory delusions have a marked tendency to use external-personal attributions when establishing the causes of negative events. Although nonclinical populations also tend to attribute negative events to external causes, those causes are typically believed to be universal in nature, rather than personal. The central goal of the present study w...

The main purpose of the present study was to examine implicit and explicit self-esteem (SE) in patients with persecutory delusions. In samples of paranoid patients, depressed patients and healthy controls, implicit SE was assessed using the experimental task of Go/No-Go association, while explicit SE was measured using two self-reporting questionnaires: the World Assumption Scale (WAS) subscale...

A social factor that has gained recent attention in understanding psychosis is trauma. In the current study the association of a history of trauma with persecutory ideation and verbal hallucinations was tested in the general public. Further, putative mediation variables including anxiety, depression and illicit drug use were examined. In a cross-sectional study, 200 members of the UK general pu...