Attribution of intentions and context processing in psychometric schizotypy

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychotic symptoms
• theory of mind
• intentionality
• psychosis
• cognitive bias

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.