AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS AND THE VERBAL TRANSFORMATION EFFECT - THE ROLE OF SUGGESTIONS

Previous studies of the Verbal Transformation Effect (VTE), the tenden cy to perceive illusory transformations of repeatedly presented words, have yielded conflicting results for hallucinating patients. In the p resent experiment, the VTE was assessed in hallucinating patients, psy chiatric controls and normal subjects under conditions in which it was suggested that different words would be presented and in which no suc h suggestion was given. No overall differences were observed between t he groups for the number of transformations reported or the latencies of transformations. However, hallucinators reported significantly more transformations in the suggestion condition compared to the no sugges tion condition. The hallucinators also reported a greater range of tra nsformations. The results indicate that the auditory judgements of hal lucinators are highly influenced by beliefs and expectations and that differing VTE results previously obtained from hallucinating patients may reflect the task demands of experiments.