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  • Title: Voice identity discrimination and hallucination-proneness in healthy young adults: a further challenge to the continuum model of psychosis?
    Author: Chhabra S, Badcock JC, Maybery MT, Leung D.
    Journal: Cogn Neuropsychiatry; 2014; 19(4):305-18. PubMed ID: 24328826.
    Abstract:
    INTRODUCTION: Auditory hallucinations occur in schizophrenia and also in the general population. However, evidence points to differences in the nature and the mechanisms of clinical and non-clinical hallucinations, challenging the dominant assumption that they represent the same phenomenon. The current study extended this evidence by examining voice identity perception in hallucination-prone individuals. In schizophrenia, deficiencies discriminating between real (external) voices have been linked to basic acoustic cues, but voice discrimination has not yet been investigated in non-clinical hallucinations. METHODS: Using a task identical to that employed in patients, multidimensional scaling of voice dissimilarity judgements was used to examine how healthy individuals differing in hallucination-proneness (30 high and 30 low hallucination-prone individuals) distinguish pairs of unfamiliar voices. The resulting dimensions were interpreted with reference to acoustic measures relevant to voice identity. RESULTS: A two-dimensional "voice space", defined by fundamental frequency (F0) and formant dispersion (Df), was derived for high and low hallucination-prone groups. There were no significant differences in speaker discrimination for high versus low hallucination-prone individuals on the basis of either F0 or Df. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest voice identity perception is not impaired in healthy individuals predisposed to hallucinations, adding a further challenge to the continuum model of psychotic symptoms.
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