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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Schizophrenia
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1470030

Imitative inhibitory control is associated with psychotic experiences in a sample from the general population

Provisionally accepted
José Luis Ulloa José Luis Ulloa 1,2*Daniel E. Núñez Daniel E. Núñez 1,2Pablo A. Gaspar Pablo A. Gaspar 2,3,4Marcel Brass Marcel Brass 5,6
  • 1 Programa de Investigación Asociativa (PIA) en Ciencias Cognitivas, Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Cognitivas (CICC), Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Talca, Talca, Chile
  • 2 Millennium Nucleus to Improve the Mental Health of Adolescents and Youths, Millennium Science Initiative, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
  • 3 Departamento de Psiquiatría y Salud Mental, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
  • 4 Departamento de Neurociencia, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
  • 5 Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
  • 6 Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, East Flanders, Belgium

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Psychotic experiences (PE) are prevalent and associated with several negative mental health outcomes in both clinical and general population, particularly in young people. A promising avenue to understand the mechanisms underlying PE is to investigate functions that may be related to specific neural systems. One of these key cognitive mechanisms is the ability to control our imitative responses, which is strongly linked to an adequate social functioning. Emergent evidence suggests that impairments in this function might be involved in the early expressions of psychosis, but few studies have investigated its association with PE in a sample from the general population. Using an imitation-inhibition paradigm we examined this relationship in a community sample of young healthy individuals (N=204) and found that increased levels of PE levels were associated with lower imitative inhibitory control. These effects seem to be specific to imitation-inhibition as no correlation was found for a more general cognitive control as addressed by a Stroop-like task. In addition, these effects seem to be more evident for paranoid ideations. Overall, our results suggest that imitative inhibitory control can serve as a proxy to detect abnormalities associated with psychotic experiences.

    Keywords: psychotic experiences, Inhibitory Control, imitation-inhibition, Community sample, online study

    Received: 24 Jul 2024; Accepted: 16 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ulloa, Núñez, Gaspar and Brass. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: José Luis Ulloa, Programa de Investigación Asociativa (PIA) en Ciencias Cognitivas, Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Cognitivas (CICC), Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Talca, Talca, Chile

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.