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Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access published online on January 31, 2005
Schizophrenia Bulletin, 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.

Article

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

Alexander T. Sack 1, Vincent G. van de Ven 2, Simone Etschenberg 3, Dietmar Schatz 4, and David E. J. Linden 5*
1 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands
2 Assistant in Opleiding, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands
3 Clinical Psychologist, Alexianer Krankenhaus, Aachen Germany. Dietmar Schatz is Resident in Psychiatry, Waldkrankenhaus Ko ppern, Friedrichsdorf, Germany
4 Resident in Psychiatry, Waldkrankenhaus Ko ppern, Friedrichsdorf, Germany
5 Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, U.K., and Honorary Lecturer, Laboratory for Neurophysiology and Neuro-imaging, Department of Psychiatry, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
David E. J. Linden, E-mail: d.linden{at}bangor.ac.uk


  Abstract

We assessed the vividness of mental imagery in schizophrenia patients in the context of psychopathology and cognitive abilities.Aquestionnaireonthevividnessofmentalimagery(Ques-tionnaire 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 othergroupdifferencesorindividualpsychopathology(e.g.,fre-quency 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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