Relationship of absorption, depersonalisation, and self-focused attention in subjects with and without hallucination proneness.

Introduction: The purpose of this work was to study the relationship of absorption, depersonalisation, and self-focused attention in subjects prone to hallucination.

Methods: A sample of 218 healthy subjects was given the LSHS-R Hallucination Scale (Bentall & Slade, 1985). Three groups, subjects with high, medium, and low hallucination proneness, were formed from this sample. The Tellegen Absorption Scale (TAS; Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974), Cambridge Depersonalisation Scale (CDS; Sierra & Berrios, 2000), and Self-Absorption Scale (SAS; McKenzie & Hoyle, 2008) were also given to all the participants. The Metacognitions Questionnaire (MCQ-30; Wells & Cartwright-Hatton, 2004) was used as a covariant to control for the effects of emotional vulnerability on the dependent variables studied.

Results: The results showed that subjects highly prone to hallucinations had significantly higher absorption, depersonalisation, and self-focused attention than the subjects in the other two groups. A hierarchical regression analysis showed that absorption and depersonalisation predict hallucination proneness.

Conclusions: The importance of the absorption, depersonalisation, and self-focused attention variables for understanding the aetiology of hallucinations is discussed in the Conclusions, where some approaches to its treatment are also suggested.