Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Persons With and Without a Need for Care

By Louise Johns, K. Kompus, M. Connell, Clara S. Humpston, T. Lincoln, E. Longden, A. Preti, Ben Alderson-Day, J. Badcock, M. Cella and 8 more. 2014

328 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are complex experiences that occur in the context of various clinical disorders. AVH also occur in individuals from the general population who have no identifiable psychiatric or neurological diagnoses. This article reviews research on AVH in nonclinical individuals and provides a cross-disciplinary view of the clinical relevance of these experiences in defining the risk of mental illness and need for care. Prevalence rates of AVH vary according to measurement tool and indicate a continuum of experience in the general population. Cross-sectional comparisons of individuals with AVH with and without need for care reveal similarities in phenomenology and some underlying mechanisms but also highlight key differences in emotional valence of AVH, appraisals, and behavioral response. Longitudinal studies suggest that AVH are an antecedent of clinical disorders when combined with negative emotional states, specific cognitive difficulties and poor coping, plus family history of psychosis, and environmental exposures such as childhood adversity. However, their predictive value for specific psychiatric disorders is not entirely clear. The theoretical and clinical implications of the reviewed findings are discussed, together with directions for future research.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Psychiatry and Mental health, Evaluation & Benchmarks

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Ben Alderson-Day
2. Charles Fernyhough
3. S. Wilkinson
4. V. Bell

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Ben Alderson-Day
2. Charles Fernyhough
3. S. Wilkinson
4. V. Bell

In Psychiatry and Mental health

1. Ben Alderson-Day
2. Charles Fernyhough
3. S. Wilkinson
4. V. Bell

In Evaluation & Benchmarks

1. Charles Fernyhough

Citations in the corpus

• Inner Speech: Development, Cognitive Functions, Phenomenology, and Neurobiology (2015, background): “Areas of active research interest include understanding the relation between clinical and nonclinical AVHs (Johns et al., 2014), including findings that AVHs in nonpatients are associated with more typical neural organization of language processes than in clinical groups (Diederen, De Weijer, et…”
• The Representation of Agents in Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (2016, background): “…hearers with a need for clinical care are more likely to attribute their voices to real people rather than non-corporeal entities (Daalman et al. , 2011) and they are also more likely to experience their voices as ‘malevolent, omnipotent, intrusive, dominant, and coercive’ (Johns et al. , 2014).”