Aberrant Salience among Young Healthy Postgraduate University Students: The Role of Cannabis Use, Psychotic-Like Experiences, and Personality.
Andrea Patti, Gabriele Santarelli, Giulio D'anna, Andrea Ballerini, Valdo Ricca
Psychopathology January 1, 2022 DOI: 10.1159/000520331
Summary
Cannabis users exhibited significantly higher aberrant salience (AS) scores, with 56 users averaging 2.5 points more than 50 nonusers on the AS Inventory. In this study of 106 postgraduate students, psychotic-like experiences were notably influenced by cannabis use, while personality traits such as self-directedness and self-transcendence were more impactful among nonusers. This highlights how cannabis use amplifies certain psychotic symptoms, suggesting a complex interplay between personality, psychotic experiences, and cannabis in shaping perceptions of reality.
Abstract
Aberrant salience (AS) is an anomalous world experience which plays a major role in psychotic proneness. In the general population, a deployment of this construct - encompassing personality traits, psychotic-like symptoms, and cannabis use - could prove useful to outline the relative importance of these factors. For this purpose, 106 postgraduate university students filled the AS Inventory (ASI), the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (CAPE), the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), and the Symptom Checklist 90-Revised (SCL-90-R). Lifetime cannabis users (n = 56) and individuals who did not use cannabis (n = 50) were compared. The role of cannabis use and psychometric indexes on ASI total scores was tested in different subgroups (overall sample, cannabis users, and nonusers). The present study confirmed that cannabis users presented higher ASI scores. The deployment of AS proved to involve positive symptom frequency (assessed through CAPE), character dimensions of self-directedness and self-transcendence (TCI subscales), and cannabis use. Among nonusers, the role of personality traits (assessed through the TCI) was preeminent, whereas positive psychotic-like experiences (measured by means of CAPE) had a major weight among cannabis users. The present study suggests that pre-reflexive anomalous world experiences such as AS are intertwined with reflexive self-consciousness, personality traits, current subclinical psychotic symptoms, and cannabis use. In the present study, subthreshold psychotic experiences proved to play a major role among cannabis users, whereas personality appeared to be more relevant among nonusers.