Study on source monitoring ability of auditory cognitive process in patients with schizophrenia

Abstract

Objective To explore the cognitive processing mechanism of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia. Methods Total 50 patients who were diagnosed as schizophrenia according to ICD-10(including 22 case with halucination(Sch-AVH group), 28 cases without hallucination(Sch-nonAVH group)) and 26 normal controls(control group) were enrolled in the study.PANSS was used to assess patients’ psychiatric symptoms.Then all subjects were detected using source monitoring paradiam and the ACSIM was compared between patients group and control group. Results There were significant differences between patients group(Sch-AVH group(0.37±0.14), Sch-nonAVH group(0.43±0.13)) and control group(0.56±0.17) on ACSIM(P 0.05). Patients group (0.63±0.25), (0.59±0.20) more often remembered imagined words as listened than control group(0.42±0.01) (P<0.05). There were significant negative correlations between PANSS positive subscale scores and ACSIM scores in Sch-AVH group and Sch-nonAVH group(-0.35, -0.39) (P<0.05). Conclusion Source monitoring is impaired in patients with schizophrenia, and some of the symptoms (such as delusions, hallucinations) may be related to a failure of reality discrimination, whereby inner speech is mistaken for an external event and misattributed to an external source. Key words: Schizophrenia; Source monitoring; Hallucination; Delusion