Presseportal

Self-monitoring accounts are the dominant cognitive account of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia such as delusions of control, thought insertion and auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH). These symptoms arise, it is claimed, due to a failure or defect in a part of a motor-control system whereby self-generated events are marked as such. I shall argue that the appeal to self-monitoring is explanatorily irrelevant to AVH and extend the argument to thought insertion as well. The argument will make explicit three questions that any account of
schizophrenia must answer for any positive symptom, and I show that self-monitoring accounts fail to answer them. Instead, I shall argue that the central feature of what I shall call "non-agentive" positive symptoms is the persistent automaticity of the relevant episodes. As the
notion of automaticity is oft used but poorly understood, I shall define these notions and then provide initial answers to the three essential questions.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Annette Winkelmann
Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin
Berlin School of Mind and Brain
Luisenstra?e 56
10117 Berlin
Phone.: +49 30 2093-1706
Email: annette.winkelmann@hu-berlin.de
www.mind-and-brain.de
www.neuroscience-berlin.de