http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:11266 The Referential Thinking (REF) scale was designed to be a comprehensive self-report measure of both simple and guilty ideas of reference in the general population. One aim of the present study was to test the proposed interpretations of REF scores by comparing REF scores with ratings of delusions among psychotic patients. A 2nd aim was to test whether REF scores are better predicted by the severity of patients’ delusions of reference (DoRs) than by the severity of their auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), thus supporting the scores’ ability to discriminate between proneness to the 2 different symptoms. The REF scale was completed by 56 healthy controls and 53 acutely psychotic patients. The severity of the patients’ DoRs and AVHs were assessed in structured clinical interviews. REF scores differed significantly not only between the patients and controls but also between patients with versus without DoRs. REF scores correlated significantly with the severity of the patients’ DoRs but not their AVHs. The interpretation of REF scores as a measure of proneness to simple and guilty ideas of reference was supported. 2012-08-14T05:58:37.357Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:10139 The Referential Thinking (REF) scale was designed to be a comprehensive self-report measure of both simple and guilty ideas of reference in the general population. One aim of the present study was to test the proposed interpretations of REF scores by comparing REF scores with ratings of delusions among psychotic patients. A 2nd aim was to test whether REF scores are better predicted by the severity of patients’ delusions of reference (DoRs) than by the severity of their auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), thus supporting the scores’ ability to discriminate between proneness to the 2 different symptoms. The REF scale was completed by 56 healthy controls and 53 acutely psychotic patients. The severity of the patients’ DoRs and AVHs were assessed in structured clinical interviews. REF scores differed significantly not only between the patients and controls but also between patients with versus without DoRs. REF scores correlated significantly with the severity of the patients’ DoRs but not their AVHs. The interpretation of REF scores as a measure of proneness to simple and guilty ideas of reference was supported. 2012-02-22T21:50:04.243Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:7292 In his recent essays Bennett reviewed the potential role of synapse pathology in schizophrenia. Following on from Selemon and Goldman-Rakic’s neuropil hypothesis of schizophrenia, Bennett argued that abnormal synapse formation and regression during childhood and adolescence results in deafferentation in sensory cortices, which, in turn, results in increased spontaneous endogenous neural activity in psychosis. He further argued that these abnormal neural activities give rise to hallucinations due to the lack of corollary discharge; that is, sending an efferent copy from frontal pre-motor areas to sensory cortices, thus allowing an individual to identify such neural activity as self-generated percepts and, in more general terms, gain ‘self awareness’. A failure of this feedforward mechanism inevitably results in a ‘loss of ego boundaries’, a key syndrome of schizophrenia. 2011-02-23T02:40:08.409Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:4752 Previous research suggests that tendencies to misattribute one's own thoughts to an external source, as assessed by an immediate source-monitoring test, are associated with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). However, recent research suggests that such tendencies are associated instead with symptoms of thought interference. The main aim of the present study was to examine whether such tendencies are differentially associated with different types of thought interference, with AVHs, or with both. It has also been suggested that external misattributions are especially likely to occur with emotionally salient material and if the individual's focus is on the self. These suggestions were also tested. The positive psychotic symptoms of 57 individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were assessed and they then completed the Self-Focus Sentence Completion blank. Immediately after completing each sentence they were asked to indicate to what extent the sentence was their own. The number of sentences that were not rated as completely their own served as their externalisation score. Externalisation scores correlated significantly with the severity of three symptoms: voices commenting, delusions of being controlled, and thought insertion. In a logistic regression analysis, all three of these symptoms were significantly and independently related to externalisation. Externalisation was not associated with either a negative or a neutral self-focus. Thus tendencies to misattribute one's own thoughts to an external source are associated with AVHs and some, but not all, symptoms of thought interference. The importance for externalisation of self-focused attention and of the emotional salience of the elicited thoughts was not supported. 2010-04-27T05:31:21.219Z ]]>