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Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access originally published online on January 31, 2005
Schizophrenia Bulletin 2005 31(1):97-104; doi:10.1093/schbul/sbi011
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Schizophrenia Bulletin vol. 31 no. 1 © Oxford University Press and the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center 2005; all rights reserved.

Enhanced vividness of mental imagery as a trait marker of schizophrenia?

Alexander T Sack, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands

Vincent G van de Ven, M.A.
Assistant in Opleiding, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands

Simone Etschenberg, M.A.
Clinical Psychologist, Alexianer Krankenhaus, Aachen Germany. Dietmar Schatz is Resident in Psychiatry, Waldkrankenhaus Köppern, Friedrichsdorf, Germany

Dietmar Schatz
Resident in Psychiatry, Waldkrankenhaus Köppern, Friedrichsdorf, Germany

David E. J Linden, M.D.
Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, U.K., and Honorary Lecturer, Laboratory for Neurophysiology and Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany

Send reprint requests to Dr. D.E.J. Linden, Senior Lecturer, University of Wales Bangor, Brigantia Building, Bangor LL57 2AS, Bangor, UK; e-mail: d.linden{at}bangor.ac.uk.

We assessed the vividness of mental imagery in schizophrenia patients in the context of psychopathology and cognitive abilities. A questionnaire on the vividness of mental imagery (Questionnaire Upon Mental Imagery [QMI]) and a hallucination scale were administered to 50 patients with paranoid schizophrenia. The related perceptual and cognitive skills, general intelligence level, and psychomotor speed were measured as covariates with a battery of performance tests. All measures were statistically compared to a group of 50 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. The schizophrenia group obtained higher values both for vividness of imagery and occurrence of hallucinations. These differences were independent of general intelligence and psychomotor speed and did not correlate with individual psychopathology. The correlation between the hallucination and imagery scales themselves was very low. These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia experience a significantly greater vividness of mental imagery than healthy controls, which does not seem to be an effect of other group differences or individual psychopathology (e.g., frequency of hallucinations). Vividness of mental imagery might thus prove to be an independent trait marker of schizophrenia.

Keywords: mental imagery / hallucinations / schizophrenia / cognition


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