BACKGROUND Delusion is one of the most intriguing psychopathological phenomena and its conceptualization remains the subject of genuine debate. Claims that it is ill-defined, however, are typically grounded on essentialist expectations that a given definition should capture the core of every instance acknowledged as delusion in the clinical setting. OBJECTIVE In this paper, we attempt to show...

A popular approach to monothematic delusions in the recent literature has been to argue that monothematic delusions involve broadly rational responses to highly unusual experiences. Campbell (2001) calls this the empiricist approach to monothematic delusions, and argues that it cannot account for the links between meaning and rationality. In place of empiricism, Campbell offers a rationalist ac...

Delusions are fixed 'false beliefs' and, although a hallmark feature of schizophrenia, no previous study has examined if delusions might be related to 'false memories'. We used the classic Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm to compare false memory production in schizophrenia patients who were currently experiencing delusions (ED), patients not experiencing delusions (ND) and healthy contro...

Mirrored-self misidentification is the delusional belief that one's own reflection in the mirror is a stranger. In two experiments, we tested the ability of hypnotic suggestion to model this condition. In Experiment 1, we compared two suggestions based on either the delusion's surface features (seeing a stranger in the mirror) or underlying processes (impaired face processing). Fifty-two high h...

OBJECTIVE Patients with schizophrenia experiencing delusions and hallucinations can misattribute their own actions to an external source. The authors test the hypothesis that patients with schizophrenia have defects in their ability to predict the sensory consequences of their actions. METHOD The authors measured sensory attenuation of self-produced stimuli by patients with schizophrenia and ...

iStudents, to give the address in which that great and good Bristol physician, Edward Long Fox, is annually c?mmemorated. I have selected "Delusions" as the subject of this lecture for two reasons. The first is as follows: delusions being the most prominent, frequent and ?haracteristic symptoms in the psychoses, it is evident that the more insight we gain in respect of their origin cln^ signifi...

Delusional beliefs and experiences can predict the development of mental disorders within the spectrum of psychosis. The nature, content and prevalence of delusional experiences in the general population are still disputed topics. This study investigates the latent structure of delusion proneness in the non-clinical population. Eight hundred young adults (400 from Italy and 400 from the United ...

Literature comparing 'jumping to conclusions' (JTC) between patients and healthy controls has demonstrated the importance of the reasoning bias in the development of delusions. When groups that vary along the entire delusional continuum are included, the relationship between JTC and delusionality is less clear. This study compared JTC and delusional dimensions between 28 patients with delusions...