Poster No:
387
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Yang WANG1, Kin-Hei CHUNG2, Chun-Yu TSE3, Suzanne Ho-Wai SO2
Institutions:
1Department of Psychiatry, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, 2Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, 3Mindfinity Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
First Author:
Yang WANG
Department of Psychiatry, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR
Co-Author(s):
Kin-Hei CHUNG
Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR
Suzanne Ho-Wai SO
Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR
Introduction:
Auditory verbal hallucination (AVH) is the experience of hearing voices without external stimuli (Beck and Rector, 2003). It is commonly reported in patients with schizophrenia and is often associated with impairments in social functioning, as well as a significant risk factor for completed suicide. One of the most common cognitive explanations for AVH points to patients' atypical processing of inner speech. Inner speech is understood as the phenomenon of covertly speaking to oneself, enabling individuals to "think in words" without verbalizing their thoughts. The inner speech nature of AVH has been demonstrated by previous studies showing experiencing AVH activates brain regions related to language production (see review by Jardri et al., 2011). Meanwhile, another line of research focusing on factors affecting the generation of AVH suggests that negative emotions are closely associated with the occurrence of AVH in schizophrenia (Copolov et al., 2004, So et al., 2021). The negative emotions may affect the inner speech processing, which could be linking to AVH generation. Along with this direction, previous study on negative emotion effect on language processing in schizophrenia observed an exaggerated semantic processing response (Klumpp et al., 2010). These studies implied the negative emotion may affect semantic processing of inner speech which serves as underlying mechanism of AVH generation. However, few studies have examined how emotion-especially negative emotion-might act as a causal factor influencing inner speech generation and how this process interact with semantic processing. The current study aims to fill this gap by investigating how negative emotion influences semantic processing phase of inner speech generation and exploring how this influence is associated with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) and symptoms in schizophrenic patients with persistent AVH.
Methods:
Thirty-four participants with schizophrenia with present AVH were included in the current study. We induced sadness or a neutral mood in participants using sad or neutral movies and examined the impact of this induced mood on a subsequent covert verb generation task. In the task, participants were required to generate a verb related to a provided picture without verbalizing it. The semantic network of the verbs was manipulated through a factor called association strength (AS). Association strength refers to the degree of connection between concepts (e.g., a picture and its associated verb) during semantic retrieval. High-AS stimuli tend to elicit the most common verb, resulting in a narrower range of verbs compared to low-AS stimuli. Therefore, the semantic association between the picture and verb is stronger and more focused for high-AS stimuli than for low-AS stimuli. The verb generation task included four conditions: neutral movie – low AS, neutral movie – high AS, sad movie – low AS, and sad movie – high AS. Participants' EEG responses, AVH experiences during the experiment (measured using a customized recording button), and clinical symptoms (assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, or PANSS) were recorded.
Results:
ERP analysis showed that participants showed stronger late positive component (LPC) for high AS pictures compared to low AS pictures during sad mood, whereas such difference is not significant during neutral mood (F(1,33) = 16.219, p =.011). The identified interaction of mood and AS on LPC (using formula: Sad (Low AS – High AS) – Neutral (Low AS-High AS)) significantly correlated with total duration of AVH during experiment (r = -0.35, p = .041), PANSS positive sore (r = -0.40, p = .021) and PANSS total score (r = -0.43, p = .011).
Conclusions:
The sad mood, compared to a neutral mood, has a greater impact on the semantic processing phase of inner speech generation in patients with schizophrenia. This effect is associated with their experience AVH and schizophrenia symptoms.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 1
Language:
Speech Production 2
Keywords:
Schizophrenia
Other - auditory verbal hallucination, emotion, inner speech
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Was this research conducted in the United States?
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Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel?
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Provide references using APA citation style.
Beck, A. T., & Rector, N. A. (2003). A cognitive model of hallucinations. Cognitive therapy and research, 27, 19-52.
Copolov D, Trauer T, Mackinnon A. On the non-significance of internal versus external auditory hallucinations. Schizophr Res. 2004; 69(1): 1-6.
Gauntlett-Gilbert J, Kuipers E. Visual hallucinations in psychiatric conditions: Appraisals and their relationship to distress. British J Clin Psychol. 2005; 44(1):77-87
Jardri, R., Pouchet, A., Pins, D., & Thomas, P. (2011). Cortical activations during auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia: a coordinate-based meta-analysis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 168(1), 73-81.
Klumpp, H., Keller, J., Miller, G. A., Casas, B. R., Best, J. L., & Deldin, P. J. (2010). Semantic processing of emotional words in depression and schizophrenia. International journal of Psychophysiology, 75(2), 211-215.
So, S. H. W., Chung, L. K. H., Tse, C. Y., Chan, S. S. M., Chong, G. H. C., Hung, K. S. Y., & Sommer, I. E. (2021). Moment-to-moment dynamics between auditory verbal hallucinations and negative affect and the role of beliefs about voices. Psychological Medicine, 51(4), 661-667.
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