Our research goal

The central theme of our research group is Psychosis and psychotic symptoms. As such, the goal of our group is to identify, study and modify the psychological processes (proximal factors) involved in the aetiology, maintenance, remission, and relapse of psychotic experiences in people who have formally received a diagnosis or people from the general population. Moreover, we are also interested in how distal transdiagnostic risk factors (e.g., childhood trauma) set the basic conditions for the development of psychotic experiences when interacting with more proximal ones.

Research Projects

Cognitive and Emotional Processes associated with Psychosis

This global project can be divided into two main branches: (1) Emotion regulation and Psychosis and (2) Repetitive thoughts and delusions. It is well established now that heightened emotionality often precedes psychotic experiences (Delespaul et al., 2002; Kramer et al., 2014; Myin-Germeys & Os, 2007). As such, the individual's strategies to deal with these emotions are crucial for understanding the onset and maintenance of Psychosis and, consequently, to reduce the burden and disability associated with these experiences. Therefore, one of our research program's key goals is to better understand emotion regulation and its role in psychotic experiences. This research relies on two primary principles. First, psychotic symptoms are transdiagnostic and should be considered regardless of the diagnosis and even the presence of a diagnosis (van Os et al., 2009). Second, emotion regulation should be considered in relation to the context in which it takes place (Aldao et al., 2015). That is, it is essential to understand its dynamic nature. This refers to the concept of emotion regulation flexibility. It can be more precisely defined as an individual's ability to use a repertoire of ER strategies to manage emotions in response to contextual demands (Bonanno & Butler, 2013). There is recent evidence suggesting that some steps of emotion regulation flexibility might be impaired in people with psychotic disorders (e.g. Visser et al., 2018) and be associated with psychotic experiences in the general population (Bortolon et al., 2023; Nardelli et al., 2022; Nardelli et al., in press). We want to understand further ER flexibility and how it might affect psychotic experiences.

Within this processual and transdiagnostic approach, rumination (as a kind of repetitive thought) has been one of the psychological processes most often studied (Aldao et al., 2010; Olatunji et al., 2013). Rumination has been primarily studied in relation to depression (Michl et al., 2013; Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Spasojević & Alloy, 2001). There are also findings showing that rumination could play a central role in the onset, maintenance, or recurrence of other mental disorders and abnormal psychological states (Aldao et al., 2010; Harvey & Watkins, 2004). Converging evidence suggests the potential influence of rumination and worry in maintaining paranoid ideas (Bortolon et al., 2019; Freeman & Garety, 2014; Martinelli et al., 2013; McKie et al., 2017). More recently, rumination has been found to lead to increased positive affect and grandiose ideas about the self in people from the general population (Bortolon et al., 2019; Bortolon et al., 2023) and associated with high levels of grandiose delusions in clinical samples (Isham et al. 2023). We seek to explore the role of repetitive thinking further and identify the specific characteristics of these processes that might best predict grandiose ideas and delusions.

PHenomenological and Neurocognitive Characterisation of the COntinuum from Mental imagery to HAllucination

In the absence of associated pathological conditions, hallucinations (Ha ) are called hallucination-like experiences, HLE (Vellante et al., 2012). Researchers documenting attenuated forms of psychotic experiences in the general population refer to their data as supporting the continuum hypothesis of Psychosis (Van Os et al., 2000, 2009), which can be divided in terms of a continuum of risk (increased risk for Psychosis) and experience (different experiences lying on the continuum) (Larøi, 2012; Larøi et al., 2012). In the current project, we are particularly interested in the second type of continuum, the continuum of experience, which suggests that different kinds of experiences, such as vivid and intrusive daydreams and intrusive thoughts, might share some similarities with hallucinations. Besides, it is hypothesised that high levels of mental imagery, intrusive thoughts and other alterations in perception, especially when they are experienced as unwanted and uncontrollable and associated with disrupted cognitive control (e.g., intentional inhibition; Waters et al., 2006), might increase the chances of also experiencing hallucinations (e.g., example for intrusive thoughts, Morrison et al., 1995). It can be considered that hallucination-like experiences are not restricted to hearing voices or sounds (or seeing shadows or other figures) without the corresponding sensory stimulation. They also include other more common experiences, including benign misperception of auditory/visual events (e.g., hearing something in a noisy environment), vivid auditory verbal imagery (e.g., clearly hearing voices of other people or characters during inner speech episodes or reading) or vivid visual imagery (e.g., having a vivid thought of seeing someone as s/he was in front of the eyes) (Aynsworth et al., 2022; Toh et al., 2022). Other experiences often counted in the hallucination continuum include sleep-related hallucinatory experiences, daydreaming and intrusive thoughts.

In terms of the continuum of experience, there is very limited data to identify commonalities and differences among these experiences. Indeed, one major concern about the link between Ha and potential underlying mechanisms is specificity, given that other experiences on the hallucination continuum could plausibly mediate or account for any relationship between the two. The overall goal of the current project is to provide a theoretical account of the hallucination continuum that integrates current research on clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience, both for clinical and non-clinical samples.

This project is a collaboration with Clément Dondé, Hélène Lœvenbruck, Alan Chauvin, Jean-Baptiste Eichenlaub and other partners. It is supported by the CerCoG - Université Grenoble Alpes.

Auditory hallucinations: the role of Cognitive-Affective and Sensorial processes

Auditory hallucinations (AH) are one of the most frequent (40%–80%; Larøi et al., 2012) and disturbing experiences described by individuals with Psychosis and are associated with distress and impaired social functioning (de Leede-Smith & Barkus, 2013). Rates of AH are often double those seen for other modalities (Waters et al., 2014). Moreover, it is well known that AH can also be characteristic of many other mental and neurological disorders and also be present in the general population (Waters & Fernyhough, 2017). Estimates for AH or voice hearing in the general population vary from 5% to 15%. Thus, individuals from the general population who report AH experiences represent a valuable population to study psychological factors associated with AH (Kelleher & Cannon, 2011; Larøi, 2012). Such non-clinical experiences of hearing voices are a unique opportunity to understand AH apart from confounding clinical factors (e.g., long-term medication and institutionalisation), thus allowing for the identification of symptom-specific mechanisms (Laroi, 2012). Moreover, the recent adoption of a symptom-focused approach has significantly improved understanding of the mechanisms underlying AH (Read et al., 2004). Indeed, a causal-interventionist approach that focuses on specific factors implicated in AH is the best approach to designing psychological interventions (Brand et al., 2017; Thomas et al., 2014). Current cognitive models target specific symptoms instead of psychotic symptoms in general (e.g., delusions and hallucinations).

Recent cognitive models of AH (e.g., Waters et al., 2012) have highlighted the importance of considering both the top-down (e.g., cognitive, emotional) and bottom-down processes associated with auditory hallucinations. Nevertheless, these two processes have rarely been explored together, even though perception is known to be influenced by bottom-up and top-down processes. Likewise, even though affect is crucial to the understanding and treatment of AH, past experimental research exploring top-down cognitive mechanisms has often neglected the role of affective and social processes on AH (Griffin & Fletcher, 2017).

This project is supported by the Agence National de Recherche - France.

Measurement of Psychosis

In psychological science, more generally, meta-scientific studies highlighted many issues related to reporting adequate information, including, but not limited to, validity, reliability and lack of transparency when reporting on measurement (Smailes et al., 2021; Barry et al., 2014; Weidman et al., 2017). Relatedly, many measures are often assumed to measure the same construct when, in fact, they are measuring different experiences (the so-called "jingle-jangle fallacy"; Weidman et al., 2017). The problem with the jingle-jangle fallacy is that the same construct cannot be compared across studies if they do not measure the same thing (de Beurs et al., 2022). This issue exists across measures used in social sciences (Flake & Fried, 2020). To date, it is somewhat unclear what the quality of the measures of psychosis-like experiences are. Some problems have been encountered with content validity and measurement invariance (Statham et al., 2019), construct validity between the same scales across different versions (Smailes et al., 2021), and lack of reporting of psychometric properties (Aynsworth et al., 2017). In addition, it is unclear to what degree different measures assessing psychotic-like experiences assess the same construct. Therefore, understanding measurement practices of psychotic-like experiences is key for our research.