Pareidolia in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

Abstract

While there are many studies on pareidolia in healthy individuals and patients with schizophrenia, to our knowledge, there are no prior studies on pareidolia in patients with bipolar disorder. Accordingly, in this study, we, for the first time, measured pareidolia in patients with bipolar disorder (N = 50), and compared that to patients with schizophrenia (N = 50) and healthy controls (N = 50). We have used (a) the scene test, which consists of 10 blurred images of natural scenes that was previously found to produce illusory face responses and (b) the noise test which had 32 black and white images consisting of visual noise and 8 images depicting human faces; participants indicated whether a face was present on these images and to point to the location where they saw the face. Illusory responses were defined as answers when observers falsely identified objects that were not on the images in the scene task (maximum illusory score: 10), and the number of noise images in which they reported the presence of a face (maximum illusory score: 32). Further, we also calculated the total pareidolia score for each task (the sum number of images with illusory responses in the scene and noise tests). The responses were scored by two independent raters with an excellent congruence (kappa > 0.9). Our results show that schizophrenia patients scored higher on pareidolia measures than both healthy controls and patients with bipolar disorder. Our findings are agreement with prior findings on more impaired cognitive processes in schizophrenia than in bipolar patients.

Face pareidolia in male schizophrenia

“…As some researchers expect higher face pareidolia rates in SZ patients who are considered to be prone to hallucinations 79 , 81 , we compared face response rates in SZ patients who self-reported hallucinations and who did not. With canonical upright orientation, face pareidolia rates did not differ between these sub-groups (with hallucinations, 0.54 ± 0.18; without, 0.48 ± 0.21; t (20) = 0.02, p = 0.490, two-tailed, n.s.).…”

“…Previous findings on face pareidolia in SZ are extremely sparse and controversial. Individuals with SZ (in the study coordinated by the Nyíro Gyula National Institute of Psychiatry and Addictions, Budapest; N = 50, 32 males/18 females) exhibited higher face pareidolia scores than neurotypical individuals and patients with bipolar disorder 81 . Yet, SZ patients ( N = 10; females and males) identified fewer face-like images as faces (60 images, 20 of which represented faces, 20 face-like non-faces, and 20 non-faces) than controls 80 .…”

“…It is shown that patients with SZ see face-like objects faster than non-face-like images 79 . In contrast, patients are reported either to identify fewer face-like images as faces 80 or exhibit higher face pareidolia scores 81 . By presenting Face-n-Food images slightly bordering on Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s portraits (consisting of genius face-resembling food compositions 82 – 88 ) in ascending order from the least to most face resembling, higher face thresholds were found in SZ 89 .…”

No common factor for illusory percepts, but a link between pareidolia and delusion tendency: a test of predictive coding theory

“…suggest that the association between pareidolia and delusion tendency is not a reflection of general psychotic tendency of an individual, but is confined to its one specific manifestation, namely delusions. It follows that increased pareidolia proneness previously reported in schizophrenia patients (Abo Hamza et al, 2021) may be explained solely by the core symptom of delusions.…”

Can you spot a face? Face pareidolia is enhanced by 40 Hz transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) of the face perception network

“…Illusory perceptions characterize multiple brain disorders and clinical conditions [88], [121]. For instance, given the impairment of perceptual integration in ScZ patients, they experience higher rates of pareidolia than healthy and other psychiatric populations [114], [122]. Indeed, Mooney stimuli comparable to those used in our study have been used to investigate GBO abnormalities in ScZ [30], [49], [123], [124].…”