Integrating the global neuronal workspace into the framework of predictive processing: Towards a working hypothesis

Hohwy (2013) proposed an account of conscious access that integrates the global neuronal workspace (GNW) into the framework of predictive processing, a view that I term the predictive global neuronal workspace (PGNW). Whilst promising, the PGNW is theoretically underdeveloped and empirically underexplored. The aim of this article is to outline the empirical predictions that distinguish the PGNW from other workspace models. I do so by (i) placing the PGNW in close contact with experimental work and cashing out a set of predictions that distinguish it from the standard formulation of the GNW, (ii) exploring the evidence for the first of these predictions in the context of bistable perception and the conscious processing of auditory regularities, and (iii), contrasting the PGNW with Chanes and Barrett (2016) limbic workspace. Combined, these arguments show that the PGNW is both testable and supported by current evidence.     

Shot through with voices: Dissociation mediates the relationship between varieties of inner speech and auditory hallucination proneness

Inner speech is a commonly experienced but poorly understood phenomenon. The Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire (VISQ; McCarthy-Jones & Fernyhough, 2011) assesses four characteristics of inner speech: dialogicality, evaluative/motivational content, condensation, and the presence of other people. Prior findings have linked anxiety and proneness to auditory hallucinations (AH) to these types of inner speech. This study extends that work by examining how inner speech relates to self-esteem and dissociation, and their combined impact upon AH-proneness. 156 students completed the VISQ and measures of self-esteem, dissociation and AH-proneness. Correlational analyses indicated that evaluative inner speech and other people in inner speech were associated with lower self-esteem and greater frequency of dissociative experiences. Dissociation and VISQ scores, but not self-esteem, predicted AH-proneness. Structural equation modelling supported a mediating role for dissociation between specific components of inner speech (evaluative and other people) and AH-proneness. Implications for the development of “hearing voices” are discussed.     

Attachment theory: a framework for understanding symptoms and interpersonal relationships in psychosis

We investigated associations between adult attachment, symptoms and interpersonal functioning, including therapeutic relationships in 96 patients with psychosis. Using a prospective design, we also assessed changes in attachment in both psychiatrically unstable and stable groups. We measured attachment using the Psychosis Attachment Measure (PAM) and interpersonal problems and therapeutic relationships were assessed from both psychiatric staff and patient perspectives. Avoidant attachment was associated with positive symptoms, negative symptoms and paranoia. Attachment ratings were relatively stable over time, although changes in attachment anxiety were positively correlated with changes in symptoms. Predicted associations between high levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance and interpersonal problems were supported, and attachment avoidance was associated with difficulties in therapeutic relationships. Findings suggest that adult attachment style is a meaningful individual difference variable in people with psychosis and may be an important predictor of symptoms, interpersonal problems and difficulties in therapeutic relationships over and above severity of illness.     

Alien voices and inner dialogue: towards a developmental account of auditory verbal hallucinations

The phenomenon of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) is one of the most intriguing features of the psychiatric literature. Two alternative models of the development of AVHs in both normal and psychotic populations are proposed. In the disruption to internalisation (DI) model, AVHs result from a disruption to the normal processes of internalisation of inner speech. In the re-expansion (RE) model, AVHs result when normal inner speech is re-expanded into inner dialogue under conditions of stress and cognitive challenge. Both models draw on Vygotsky's (The Collected Works Of L.S. Vygotsky, New York, Plenum Press, 1987) ideas about the development of inner speech. On this view, normal inner speech is considerably abbreviated relative to external speech, and also undergoes some important semantic transformations. In both the DI and RE models, AVHs arise when the subject's inner speech involves inappropriately expanded inner dialogue, leading the subject to experience the voices in the dialogue as alien. The two models may prove useful in explaining some of the social-developmental evidence surrounding the phenomenon, and also make a number of testable predictions which are suggested as priorities for future research.     

Delusions and decision-making style: use of the Need for Closure Scale

Clinicians and researchers have suggested that rapidity in belief formation, due to having a high 'need for closure' (NFC), may contribute to the acceptance of delusional explanations. The aim of the study is to determine whether NFC has such a direct link with delusions. A secondary aim is to examine if NFC is related to the delusion-associated reasoning process of 'jumping to conclusions'. One hundred and eighty-seven patients with psychosis, recruited for a treatment trial of psychological therapy (the PRP trial), completed the Need for Closure Scale (NFCS), symptom measures, and probabilistic reasoning tasks. The NFCS was considered in terms of its two dimensions: a desire for simple structure and a preference for quick, decisive answers. The individuals with psychosis reported being poor at making quick, decisive answers but required a greater need for simple structure. NFC was associated with levels of anxiety and depression. There were weak links between NFC and both positive and negative symptoms of psychosis, but these were explained by differences in affect. NFCS scores were unrelated to jumping to conclusions. Contrary to the argument that NFC is directly linked to delusions, individuals with delusions actually perceive themselves as indecisive. There was no evidence that NFC-at least as assessed by the NFCS-could be a proximal cause of delusions. Any potential effect on psychotic symptom presentation is indirect, mediated through affect. The use of the NFCS on its own in the study of psychotic symptoms cannot be recommended.     

Sense of agency over thought: external misattribution of thought in a memory task and proneness to auditory hallucination

Previous studies have suggested that auditory hallucination is closely related to thought insertion. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the external misattribution of thought and auditory hallucination-like experiences. We used the AHES-17, which measures auditory hallucination-like experiences in normal, healthy people, and the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm, in which false alarms of critical lure are regarded as spontaneous external misattribution of thought. We found that critical lures elicited increased the number of false alarms as AHES-17 scores increased and that scores of AHES-17 predicted the rate of false memory of critical lures. Furthermore, we revealed that the relationship between AHES-17 scores and the rates of false alarms to critical lures was strictly linear. Therefore, it might be said that individual differences in auditory hallucination-like experiences are highly related to the external misattribution of thought. We discussed these results from the perspective of the sense of agency over thought.     

Further evidence for the efficacy of a metacognitive group training in schizophrenia

Metacognitive training (MCT) for patients with schizophrenia is a novel psychological group treatment targeting cognitive biases putatively involved in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia (e.g. jumping to conclusions, overconfidence in errors). Its eight modules are available cost-free online in many languages. In the present study, 36 subacute or remitted patients were randomly allocated to either the MCT or a wait-list group who received treatment-as-usual (TAU). Baseline and post assessments were 8 weeks apart and were performed blind to group status. MCT showed significantly greater improvement on the following parameters relative to the TAU group: delusion distress (PSYRATS), memory and social quality of life. In the MCT group, the rate of jumping to conclusions bias was reduced after training. No differences occurred on the PANSS. The present study confirms prior reports that MCT exerts beneficial effects on some cognitive and symptomatic parameters.     

Electrographic correlates of lateral asymmetry in the processing of verbal and nonverbal auditory stimuli

A veraged evoked potentials (AEP) to verbal (digits) and nonverbal (clicks) auditory stimuli were recorded from left and right temporal leads in ten right-handed Ss. With dichotic presentation, there was no significant difference in accuracy of report of the clicks heard in each ear, but significantly more digits were identified correctly from the right ear than from the left. Dichotic verbal stimuli elicited AEP whose early components were of greater amplitude, and whose later components were of shorter latency, from the left hemisphere than from the right. No consistent latency or amplitude differences were observed between AEP from the left and right hemispheres when clicks were presented dichotically.     

Enactivism and predictive processing: a non-representational view

This paper starts by considering an argument for thinking that predictive processing (PP) is representational. This argument suggests that the Kullback–Leibler (KL)-divergence provides an accessible measure of misrepresentation, and therefore, a measure of representational content in hierarchical Bayesian inference. The paper then argues that while the KL-divergence is a measure of information, it does not establish a sufficient measure of representational content. We argue that this follows from the fact that the KL-divergence is a measure of relative entropy, which can be shown to be the same as covariance (through a set of additional steps). It is well known that facts about covariance do not entail facts about representational content. So there is no reason to think that the KL-divergence is a measure of (mis-)representational content. This paper thus provides an enactive, non-representational account of Bayesian belief optimisation in hierarchical PP.     

Experiences of activity and causality in schizophrenia: When predictive deficits lead to a retrospective over-binding

In this paper I discuss an intriguing and relatively little studied symptomatic expression of schizophrenia known as experiences of activity in which patients form the delusion that they can control some external events by the sole means of their mind. I argue that experiences of activity result from patients being prone to aberrantly infer causal relations between unrelated events in a retrospective way owing to widespread predictive deficits. Moreover, I suggest that such deficits may, in addition, lead to an aberrant intentional binding effect i.e., the subjective compression of the temporal interval between an intentional action and its external effects (Haggard et al., 2002a, Haggard et al., 2002b). In particular, it might be that patient’s thoughts are bound to the external events they aimed to control producing, arguably, a temporal contiguity between these two components. Such temporal contiguity would reinforce or sustain the (causal) feeling that the patient mind is directly causally efficient.     

An on-line task for contrasting auditory processing in the verbal and nonverbal domains and norms for younger and older adults

Contrasting linguistic and nonlinguistic processing has been of interest to many researchers with different scientific, theoretical, or clinical questions. However, previous work on this type of comparative analysis and experimentation has been limited. In particular, little is known about the differences and similarities between the perceptual, cognitive, and neural processing of nonverbal environmental sounds and that of speech sounds. With the aim of contrasting verbal and nonverbal processing in the auditory modality, we developed a new on-line measure that can be administered to subjects from different clinical, neurological, or sociocultural groups. This is an on-line task of sound to picture matching, in which the sounds are either environmental sounds or their linguistic equivalents and which is controlled for potential task and item confounds across the two sound types. Here, we describe the design and development of our measure and report norming data for healthy subjects from two different adult age groups: younger adults (18–24 years of age) and older adults (54–78 years of age). We also outline other populations to which the test has been or is being administered. In addition to the results reported here, the test can be useful to other researchers who are interested in systematically contrasting verbal and nonverbal auditory processing in other populations.     

Behavioral assessment of auditory processing deficits in schizophrenia: Literature review and suggestions for future research

During the last decades, a considerable number of studies about auditory processing deficits in schizophrenia have been published, some of them using the term of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). Due to heterogeneous methodology and inconsistent results concrete conclusions may not be straightforward. We focused on studies that used at least one behavioral test for the assessment of auditory processing in schizophrenia, in order to identify new evidence on auditory processing deficits in schizophrenia, and to consider fields for future research. 28 studies met inclusion criteria and are presented in this review. The articles were divided into three groups, those that implemented a test battery approach, those that used only Dichotic Listening (DL), those that used DL along with imaging or electrophysiology techniques. Most of the studies that implemented a test battery showed significant performance differences between patients and controls. This indicates APD presence. Due to the limited number of studies implementing a test battery, this is not conclusive. The majority of all studies that used a DL task showed that patients' performance or laterality was significantly lower than that of controls. Age, duration of illness, total and specific positive symptoms seem to affect significantly DL performance and auditory laterality. The results support the existence of various schizophrenia subgroups that differ in their auditory processing performance, and also have structural and functional specificities. Further research in the field is needed, especially studies that implement a test battery, and studies that examine possible correlations between clinical variables and auditory processing deficits.     

大脑电刺激在听觉语言加工研究中的应用

大脑电刺激是历史悠久但近年来才广泛应用在人类被试上的实验技术。通过对颅内刺激位点进行电刺激, 并分析引发的暂时性行为功能变化和记录位点的电位活动, 大脑电刺激技术可以揭示认知加工过程中脑区内的功能作用与脑区间的有效连接。通过对听觉语言加工过程相关的丘脑、听觉皮层、高级语言皮层进行电刺激, 现有研究发现了各个脑区的不同功能特点以及不同脑区间的信息传递机制, 为进一步探索听觉语言加工的神经机制提供了新的视角。     

Global processing speed as a mediator of developmental changes in children's auditory memory span

This study examined the role of global processing speed in mediating age increases in auditory memory span in 5- to 13-year-olds. Children were tested on measures of memory span, processing speed, single-word speech rate, phonological sensitivity, and vocabulary. Structural equation modeling supported a model in which age-associated increases in processing speed predicted the availability of long-term memory phonological representations for redintegration processes. The availability of long-term phonological representations, in turn, explained variance in memory span. Maximum speech rate did not predict independent variance in memory span.     

Effects of multimodal presentation and stimulus familiarity on auditory and visual processing

Two experiments examined the effects of multimodal presentation and stimulus familiarity on auditory and visual processing. In Experiment 1, 10-month-olds were habituated to either an auditory stimulus, a visual stimulus, or an auditory-visual multimodal stimulus. Processing time was assessed during the habituation phase, and discrimination of auditory and visual stimuli was assessed during a subsequent testing phase. In Experiment 2, the familiarity of the auditory or visual stimulus was systematically manipulated by prefamiliarizing infants to either the auditory or visual stimulus prior to the experiment proper. With the exception of the prefamiliarized auditory condition in Experiment 2, infants in the multimodal conditions failed to increase looking when the visual component changed at test. This finding is noteworthy given that infants discriminated the same visual stimuli when presented unimodally, and there was no evidence that multimodal presentation attenuated auditory processing. Possible factors underlying these effects are discussed.     

Consciousness and the varieties of emotion experience: a theoretical framework

Data reviewed suggest that previous theories of emotion experience are too narrow in scope and that lack of consensus is due to the fact that emotion experience takes various forms and is heterogenous. The authors treat separately the content of emotion experience, the underlying nonconscious correspondences, and processes producing emotion experience. They classify the nature and content of emotion experience and propose that it depends on 3 aspects of attention: mode (analytic-synthetic; detached-immersed), direction (self-world), and focus (evaluation-action). The account is informed by a 2-level view of consciousness in which phenomenology (1st order) is distinguished from awareness (2nd order). These distinctions enable the authors to differentiate and account for cases of "unconscious" emotion, in which there is an apparent lack of phenomenology or awareness.     

The differential effect of background music on memory for verbal and visuospatial information

Background music is a part of our everyday activities. Considerable evidence suggests that listening to music while performing cognitive tasks may negatively influence performance. However, other studies have shown that it can benefit memory when the music played during the encoding of information is also provided during the retrieval of that information, in the so-called context dependent memory effect. Since controversial results may be attributed to the nature of the material to be memorized, the aim of the present study is to compare the potential effect of consistent background music on the immediate and long-term recall of verbal and visuospatial information. Experiment 1 showed that instrumental background music does not benefit nor decrease recall of a list of unrelated words, both at the immediate and the 48-hours-delayed tests. By contrast, Experiment 2 revealed that the same background music can impair immediate and therefore long-term memory for visuospatial information. Results are interpreted in terms of competition for neurocognitive resources, with tasks mostly relying on the same brain hemisphere competing for a limited set of resources. Hence, background music might impair visuospatial memory to a greater extent than verbal memory, in the context of limited capacity cognitive system. In conclusion, the nature of the material to be learnt must be considered to fully understand the effect of background music on memory.     

Parallel distributed processing and neuropsychology: A neural network model of Wisconsin card sorting and verbal fluency

Neural networks can be used as a tool in the explanation of neuropsychological data. Using the Hebbian Learning Rule and other such principles as competition and modifiable interlevel feedback, researchers have successfully modeled a widely used neuropsychological test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. One of these models is reviewed here and extended to a qualitative analysis of how verbal fluency might be modeled, which demonstrates the importance of accounting for the attentional components of both tests. Difficulties remain in programming sequential cognitive processes within a parallel distributed processing (PDP) framework and integrating exceedingly complex neuropsychological tests such as Proverbs. PDP neural network methodology offers neuropsychologists co-validation procedures within narrowly defined areas of reliability and validity.     

Integration of syntactic and semantic information in predictive processing: cross-linguistic evidence from German and English

Two visual-world eyetracking experiments were conducted to investigate whether, how, and when syntactic and semantic constraints are integrated and used to predict properties of subsequent input. Experiment 1 contrasted auditory German constructions such as, The hare-nominative eats ... (the cabbage-acc) versus The hare-accusative eats ... (the fox-nom), presented with a picture containing a hare, fox, cabbage, and distractor. We found that the probabilities of the eye movements to the cabbage and fox before the onset of NP2 were modulated by the case-marking of NP1, indicating that the case-marking (syntactic) information and verbs' semantic constraints are integrated rapidly enough to predict the most plausible NP2 in the scene. Using English versions of the same stimuli in active/passive voice (Experiment 2), we replicated the same effect, but at a slightly earlier position in the sentence. We discuss the discrepancies in the two Germanic languages in terms of the ease of integrating information across, or within, constituents.     

Proficiency in a second language influences the processing of number words

We evaluated whether proficiency in a second language (L2) influenced the processing of numerical information. In Experiment 1, two groups of German/English bilinguals, one less proficient in English (L2) and the other more proficient in L2, performed two-digit number comparison tasks while the unit–decade compatibility was evaluated. All participants presented compatibility effect with Arabic digits regardless of their L2 proficiency. However, when bilinguals with less proficiency in L2 performed verbal number comparison tasks they showed regular compatibility effect in German and reverse compatibility effect in English, whereas more proficient bilinguals did not show compatibility effects in either German or English. In Experiment 2, the same pattern of results was obtained with highly proficient bilinguals after controlling their working memory span. These results indicate that L2 proficiency influences the processing of two-digit number words.