Artists report higher levels of aberrant salience—the tendency to attribute unusual significance to stimuli—than both healthy controls and patients with psychosis. In a study of 196 healthy controls, 50 artists from the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, and 84 outpatients diagnosed with psychosis, artists scored significantly higher on the Aberrant Salience Inventory. Group membership was the only factor influencing scores; age, gender, education, and antipsychotic treatment did not. The authors suggest that aberrant salience, rather than being solely a marker of pathology, may enhance creative faculties and unique perceptual experiences, and that education might help channel these mechanisms through art.
Adolescents reported more severe psychotic symptoms on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale than adults, while no significant difference was found in cannabis exposure or Aberrant Salience Inventory scores. A hierarchical pattern emerged among adult subgroups, with psychotic patients scoring higher than other psychiatric and neurological patients. The findings suggest that aberrant salience, and to a lesser degree cannabis use, may contribute to psychotic symptom severity, particularly during more at-risk developmental phases. The role of cannabis in this relationship remains unclear.