Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals
Frontiers in Psychology April 8, 2021 Heiner Stuke, Elisabeth Kress, Veith Weilnhammer et al. 41 citations
People with stronger tendencies toward hallucinations and delusions are more likely to perceive faces in visual noise and to detect invisible direct gaze, supporting the theory that psychosis involves overweighing high-level prior expectations over sensory evidence. In 39 healthy individuals varying in psychosis proneness, the tendency to see faces in noise correlated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.50) and delusion proneness (r = 0.46). The tendency to detect invisible direct gaze also correlated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.43) but not conclusively with delusion proneness. These findings suggest that overly strong priors for socially meaningful stimuli may represent an early processing alteration in psychosis.