A reflection upon methods to explore timing in patients with schizophrenia.
Brice Martin, Nicolas Franck, Anne Giersch
PsyCh journal March 1, 2019 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1002/pchj.268 via PubMed
Summary
Phenomenological descriptions of minimal-self disorders in schizophrenia highlight distortions of conscious experience, including inner void, self-other confusion, and disrupted sense of time continuity. These are linked to a breakdown in the temporal structure of consciousness and difficulty retaining past or predicting future information. Experimental psychology suggests deficient sequence prediction at the millisecond level. This paper reflects on the limits of both approaches and their convergence, cautioning against premature conclusions about underlying mechanisms while aiming to enrich understanding of schizophrenia.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Phenomenological and experimental psychology approaches to time disruption in schizophrenia converge but have limits that require caution to avoid premature mechanistic conclusions. |
Abstract
Phenomenologists have provided a detailed description of the disorders of the subjective experience associated with minimal-self disorders in patients with schizophrenia. Those patients report a range of distortions of their conscious experiences, including a sense of inner void, confusion between self and others, and, sometimes, a disruption of the sense of time. These reports have been interpreted as distortion of the first-person perspective and a lack of immersion in the world, associated with a breakdown of the temporal structure of consciousness, and especially a disruption of the sense of time continuity. Further, it has been proposed that these disruptions are based on a difficulty to retain past information and to predict future information, that is, the mechanisms that help to relate events with one another and to reach a sense of time continuity. Experimental psychology results seem to converge to similar conclusions, inasmuch as some results in patients with schizophrenia suggest a deficient ability to predict sequences of events at the millisecond level. Several studies have underlined this convergence. Here we reflect on the limits of both the phenomenological and experimental psychology approaches, and of the convergence of their hypotheses. We think that this reflection is necessary to avoid premature conclusions on the mechanisms underlying the impairments in patients, but also to enrich our understanding of schizophrenia.