The role of Psychotic-Like Experiences in the association between
Aberrant Salience and Anxiety: a case-control mediation study
Abstract
Introduction: Aberrant salience and psychotic-like experiences have been
proven to be linked. Moreover, anxiety is a key symptom in psychosis
prone subjects and in most psychotic patients. We propose a mediation
model that attempts to interpret the role of psychotic-like experiences
in the association between aberrant salience and anxiety among healthy
controls and psychotic patients. Materials and Methods: Demographic and
psychometric data (Aberrant Salience Inventory, Community Assessment of
Psychic Experiences, Symptom Check List-90-revised) from 163 controls
and 27 psychotic patients was collected. Descriptive statistics,
correlations and a mediation analysis with covariates were subsequently
performed. Results: Aberrant salience correlated with more frequent
positive psychotic-like experiences and higher anxiety levels in both
patients and controls. However, positive psychotic-like experiences’
frequency mediated the relationship between aberrant salience and
anxiety only among controls. Conclusions: The preservation of insight
onto their psychotic-like experiences among controls with high aberrant
salience, and its partial or complete loss in psychotic patients seems
to be the most probable hypothesis to explain why psychotic-like
experiences linked to aberrant salience appear to induce anxiety among
the former group but not the latter.