Reduced attention-driven auditory sensitivity in hallucination-prone individuals

Abstract

Background: Evidence suggests that auditory hallucinations may result from abnormally enhanced auditory sensitivity.

Aims: To investigate whether there is an auditory processing bias in healthy individuals who are prone to experiencing auditory hallucinations.

Method: Two hundred healthy volunteers performed a temporal order judgement task in which they determined whether an auditory or a visual stimulus came first under conditions of directed attention ('attend-auditory' and 'attend-visual' conditions). The Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale was used to divide the sample into high and low hallucination-proneness groups.

Results: The high hallucination-proneness group exhibited a reduced sensitivity to auditory stimuli under the attend-auditory condition. By contrast, attention-directed visual sensitivity did not differ significantly between groups.

Conclusions: Healthy individuals prone to hallucinatory experiences may possess a bias in attention towards internal auditory stimuli at the expense of external sounds. Interventions involving the redistribution of attentional resources would have therapeutic benefit in patients experiencing auditory hallucinations.