Cross-Modality Evidence for Reduced Choice History Biases in Psychosis-Prone Individuals

Objectives: Predictive processing posits that perception emerges from inferential processes within a hierarchical cortical system. Alterations of these processes may result in psychotic experiences, such as hallucinations and delusions. Central to the predictive processing account of psychosis is the notion of aberrant weights attributed to prior information and sensory input. Based on the notion that previous perceptual choices represent a relevant source of prior information, we here asked whether the propensity towards psychotic experiences may be related to altered choice history biases in perceptual decision-making.

Methods: We investigated the relationship between choice history biases in perceptual decision-making and psychosis proneness in the general population. Choice history biases and their adaptation to experimentally induced changes in stimulus serial dependencies were investigated in decision-making tasks with auditory (experiment 1) and visual (experiment 2) stimuli. We further explored a potential compensatory mechanism for reduced choice history biases by reliance on predictive cross-modal cues.

Results: In line with our preregistered hypothesis, psychosis proneness was associated with decreased choice history biases in both experiments. This association is generalized across conditions with and without stimulus serial dependencies. We did not find consistent evidence for a compensatory reliance on cue information in psychosis-prone individuals across experiments.

Conclusions: Our results show reduced choice history biases in psychosis proneness. A compensatory mechanism between implicit choice history effects and explicit cue information is not supported unequivocally by our data.