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ABSTRACT
Introduction: Impairment in Theory of mind (TOM) has frequently been associated with schizophrenia and with schizotypy. Studies have found that a tendency to over-attribute intentions and special meaning to events and to people is related to positive psychotic symptoms. Further, it has been suggested that this intentionality bias may be due to a broader deficit in context processing (CP). The aim of the present study was thus to investigate the relationship between positive schizotypy and both over-attribution of intentions and contextual processing.
Methods: One-hundred and nineteen healthy individuals completed the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire and were assessed with tasks measuring contextual treatment and ToM.
Results: Results revealed that positive schizotypy was significantly related to an over-attribution of intentions on the ToM task and with a faster processing of implicit context. Partial correlational analyses indicated that the association between the attribution of intentions and positive schizotypy was not explained by a deficit of CP. In contrast, stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that both an over-attribution of intentions and a faster processing of implicit context significantly predicted positive schizotypy.
Conclusions: These results show that an over-attribution of intention is independent from a broader deficit in context information processing and that they both possibly contribute to the development and maintenance of positive psychotic symptoms.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.