Hostname: page-component-66644f4456-vbzrr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-13T06:40:59.412Z Has data issue: true hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Seeing is Believing: The Role of ‘Preconscious' Perceptual Processing in Delusional Misidentification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Simon Fleminger
Simon Fleminger*
Affiliation:
The Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We have no introspective knowledge of the effects of preconscious processing on our perceptions. We are, therefore, not aware that our expectancies may have prejudiced our perceptions. Expectancies tend to foster perceptions with which they are consonant. Therefore false expectations, driven by false beliefs, may result in misperceptions which reinforce those false beliefs. This morbid cycle is central to the delusional misidentification syndromes. This cycle, with positive feedback, is intrinsically unstable, which helps to explain brief episodes of delusional misidentification. Good sensory data, strong links between sense data and memory, and good judgement will all help to prevent misperceptions. The less these constraints are disrupted, the stronger will be the psychological forces needed to generate a delusional misidentification. It is likely that suspiciousness generates particularly assertive effects on preconscious processing of perceptions. Abnormalities of perceptual processing in patients with schizophrenia explain their proclivity to delusional misidentification.

Type
Annotation
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 160 , Issue 3 , March 1992 , pp. 293 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abroms, G. M., Taintor, Z. C. & Lhamon, W. T. (1966) Percept assimilation and paranoid severity. Archives of General Psychiatry, 14, 491–496.Google Scholar
Alexander, M., Struss, D. T. & Benson, D. F. (1979) Capgras' syndrome: a reduplicative phenomenon. Neurology, 29, 334–339.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association (1987) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd edn revised) (DSM–III–R). Washington, DC: APA.Google Scholar
Anderson, D. N. (1988) The delusion of inanimate doubles: implications for understanding the Capgras phenomenon. British Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 694–699.Google Scholar
Anderson, J. R. (1980) Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co.Google Scholar
Barrett, S. E., Rugg, M. D. & Perrett, D. I. (1988) Event-related potentials and the matching of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Neuropsychologia, 26, 105–117.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bartlett, F. C. (1932) Remembering. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barton, J. L. & Barton, E. S. (1986) Misidentification syndromes and sexuality. Bibliotheca Psychiatrica, 164, 105–120.Google Scholar
Bemporad, J. R. (1967) Perceptual disorders in schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 123, 971–976.Google Scholar
Benson, D. F., Gardner, H. & Meadows, J. C. (1976) Reduplicative paramnesia. Neurology, 26, 147–151.Google Scholar
Berson, R. J. (1983) Capgras' syndrome. American Journal of Psychiatry, 140, 969–978.Google Scholar
Bland, R. C. (1971) Capgras' syndrome: a case report. Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal, 16, 369–371.Google Scholar
Breese, B. B. (1899) On inhibition. Psychological Review Monographs, 3.Google Scholar
Brennan, J. H. & Hemsley, D. R. (1984) Illusory correlations in paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenics. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 23, 225–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J. S. & Postman, L. (1950) On the perception of incongruity: A paradigm. In Perception and Personality (ed. Bruner, J. S. & Krech, H.), pp. 206 223. Durham, N. Carolina: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Burns, A. (1985) The oldest patient with Capgras' syndrome? British Journal of Psychiatry, 147, 719–720.Google Scholar
Burns, A. & Philpot, M. (1987) Capgras' syndrome in a patient with dementia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 150, 876–877.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chawla, S., Buchan, T. & Galen, G. (1987) Capgras syndrome: a case report from Zimbabwe. British Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 254–256.Google Scholar
Christodoulou, G. N. (1986) Course and outcome of the delusional misidentification syndromes. Bibliotheca Psychiatrica, 164, 143–148.Google Scholar
Claparède, E. (1911) Recognition et moiïté. Archives of Psychology (Gen$ve), 11, 79–90.Google Scholar
Cobb, W. A., Morton, H. B. & Ettlinger, G. (1967) Cerebral evoked potentials evoked by pattern reversal and their suppression in visual rivalry. Nature, 216, 1123–1125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coleman, S. M. (1933) Misidentification and non-recognition. Journal of Mental Science, 79, 42–51.Google Scholar
Crookes, T. G. & Hutt, S. J. (1970) Perception of hidden figures by neurotic and schizophrenic patients. British Journal of Psychiatry, 116, 335–336.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cooper, A. F. (1976) Deafness and psychiatric illness. British Journal of Psychiatry, 129, 216–226.Google Scholar
Cutting, J. (1985) The Psychology of Schizophrenia. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.Google Scholar
Cutting, J. (1990) The Right Cerebral Hemisphere and Psychiatric Disorders. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cutting, J. & Murphy, D. (1988) Schizophrenic thought disorder: A psychological and organic perspective. British Journal of Psychiatry, 152, 310–319.Google Scholar
De Pauw, K. W. & Szulecka, T. K. (1988) Dangerous delusions: violence and the misidentification syndromes. British Journal of Psychiatry, 152, 91–96.Google Scholar
Dixon, N. F. (1984) Subliminal perception and microgenesis. In Psychological Processes in Cognition and Personality (eds. Froehlich, W. D., Smith, G., Draguns, J., et al), pp. 225 230. Washington: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation.Google Scholar
Ellis, H. D. & Young, A. W. (1990) Accounting for delusional misidentifications. British Journal of Psychiatry, 157, 239–248.Google Scholar
Emmerson, P. G. (1986) Effects of environmental context on recognition memory in an unusual environment. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 63, 1047–1050.Google Scholar
Em rich, H. M. (1989) A three-component-system hypothesis of psychosis. British Journal of Psychiatry, 155 (suppl. 5), 37–39.Google Scholar
Enoch, D. M. (1986) Whose double? The psychopathology of the delusional misidentification syndromes, especially the Capgras' syndrome. Bibliotheca Psychiatrica, 164, 22–29.Google Scholar
Enoch, D. M. & Trethowan, W. H. (1979) Uncommon Psychiatric Syndromes. Bristol: Wright.Google Scholar
Feinberg, T. E. & Shapiro, R. M. (1989) Misidentification-reduplication and the right hemisphere. Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology and Behavioural Neurology, 2, 39–48.Google Scholar
Fish, F. J. (1962) Schizophrenia. Bristol: John Wright.Google Scholar
Fisher, C. M. (1982) Disorientation for place. Archives of Neurology, 39, 33–36.Google Scholar
Fisher, R. P. & Craik, F. I. M. (1977) Interaction between encoding and retrieval operations in cued recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6, 701–711.Google Scholar
Frith, C. D. (1987) The positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia reflect impairments in the perception and initiation of action. Psychological Medicine, 17, 631–648.Google Scholar
Frith, C. D., Stevens, M., Johnstone, E. C., et al (1983) The integration of schematic faces and other complex objects in schizophrenia. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 171, 34–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gelder, M., Gath, D. & Mayou, R. (1983) Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gregory, R. L. (1987a) Perception as hypotheses. In The Oxford Companion to the Mind (ed. Gregory, R. L.), pp. 608–611. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gregory, R. L. (1987b) Illusions. In The Oxford Companion to the Mind (ed. Gregory, R. L.), pp. 337–343. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gregory, R. L. (1987c) The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Griffith, J. H., Frith, C. D. & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1980) Psychotirism and thought disorder in psychiatric patients. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 65–71.Google Scholar
Hakim, H., Verma, N. P. & Greiffenstein, M. F. (1988) Pathogenesis of reduplicative paramnesia. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 51, 839–841.Google Scholar
Haslam, M. (1973) A case of Capgras' syndrome. American Journal of Psychiatry, 130, 493–494.Google Scholar
Hemsley, D. R. (1987) An experimental psychological model for schizophrenia. In Search for the Causes of Schizophrenia (eds Hafner, H., Gattaz, W. F. & Janzarik, W.), pp. 179–188. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huq, S. F., Garety, P. A. & Hemsley, D. R. (1988) Probabilistic judgements in deluded and non-deluded subjects. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40A, 801–812.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, C. V. (1953) Visual factors in auditory localisation. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 5, 52–65.Google Scholar
Jaspers, K. (1962) General Psychopathology. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Joseph, A. B. (1986) Focal CNS abnormalities in delusional misidentification syndromes. Bibliotheca Psychiatrica, 164, 68–79.Google Scholar
Klein, D. F., Gittelman, R., Quitkin, F., et al (1981) The concept of psychosis. In Diagnosis and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: Adults and Children (2nd edn), pp. 48–55. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.Google Scholar
Kraepelin, E. (1921) Manic–Depressive Insanity and Paranoia (trans. Barclay, R. M.). Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone.Google Scholar
Kraupl Taylor, F. (1983) Descriptive and developmental phenomena. In Handbook of Psychiatry Vol. J General Psychopathology (eds Shepherd, M. & Zangwill, O. L.), pp. 59–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kumar, V. (1987) Capgras' syndrome in a patient with dementia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 150, 251.Google Scholar
Lansky, M. R. (1986) Capgras' syndrome and the significance of delusions. Bibliotheca Psychiatrica, 164, 49–58.Google Scholar
Levy, R. & Maxwell, A. E. (1968) The effect of verbal context on the recall of schizophrenics and other psychiatric patients. British Journal of Psychiatry, 114, 311–316.Google Scholar
Lewis, S. W. (1987) Brain imaging in a case of Capgras' syndrome. British Journal of Psychiatry, 150, 117–120.Google Scholar
Lipkin, B. (1988) Capgras' syndrome heralding the development of dementia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 117–118.Google Scholar
Lishman, W. A. (1972) Selective factors in memory. Part 2: affective disorder. Psychological Medicine, 2, 248–253.Google Scholar
Lishman, W. A. (1987) Organic Psychiatry: The Psychological Consequences of Cerebral Disorder (2nd edn). Oxford: Blackwell Scientific.Google Scholar
MacCallum, W. A. G. (1973) Capgras symptoms with an organic basis. British Journal of Psychiatry, 123, 639–642.Google Scholar
Mandler, G. (1980) Recognizing: the judgement of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252–271.Google Scholar
Marcel, A. J. (1983) Conscious and unconscious perception: an approach to the relations between phenomenal experience and perceptual processes. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 238–300.Google Scholar
Matussek, P. (1952) Studies in delusional perception. In The Clinical Roots of the Schizophrenia Concept (eds Cutting, J. & Shepherd, M.), pp. 89–103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McCormick, D. J. & Broekema, V. J. (1978) Size estimation, perceptual recognition and cardiac rate response in acute paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenics. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87, 385–398.Google Scholar
McGinnies, E. (1949) Emotionality and perceptual defense. Psychological Review, 56, 244–251.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, J. A. & Sims, A. (1984) Co-existence of the Capgras' and Ekbom syndromes. British Journal of Psychiatry, 145, 439–444.Google Scholar
McReynolds, P., Collins, B. & Acker, M. (1964) Delusional thinking and cognitive organisation in schizophrenia. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 69, 210–212.Google Scholar
Merrin, E. L. & Silberfarb, P. M. (1976) The Capgras' phenomenon. Archives of General Psychiatry, 33, 965–968.Google Scholar
Mintz, S. & Albert, M. (1972) Imagery vividness, reality-testing and schizophrenic hallucinations. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 79, 310–316.Google Scholar
Morrison, R. L. & Tarter, R. E. (1984) Neuropsychological findings related to Capgras' syndrome. Biological Psychiatry, 19, 1119–1128.Google Scholar
Mullan, S. & Penfield, W. (1959) Illusions of comparative interpretation and emotion. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 81, 269–284.Google Scholar
Noton, D. & Stark, L. (1971) Eye movements and visual perception. Scientific American, 224, 34–43.Google Scholar
O'Reilly, R. & Malhotra, L. (1987) Capgras' syndrome – an unusual case and discussion of psychodynamic factors. British Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 263–265.Google Scholar
Paterson, A. & Zangwill, O. (1944) Recovery of spatial orientation in the post-traumatic confusional state. Brain, 67, 54–68.Google Scholar
Proust, M. (1919) Overture to Swann's Way. In Remembrance of Things Past (trans. Scott Moncrieff, C. K. & Kilmartin, T.). London: Chatto & Windus.Google Scholar
Ron, M. A. & Harvey, I. (1990) The brain in schizophrenia. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 53, 725–726.Google Scholar
Salthouse, T. A. (1988) Effects of aging on perceptual closure. American Journal of Psychology, 101, 217–238.Google Scholar
Schneider, S. J. (1976) Selective attention in schizophrenia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 85, 167–173.Google Scholar
Schwartz-Place, E. J. & Gilmour, G. C. (1980) Perceptual organisation in schizophrenia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 89, 409–418.Google Scholar
Signer, S. F. & Ibister, S. R. (1987) Capgras' syndrome, de Clerambault's syndrome and folie à deux. British Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 402–404.Google Scholar
Sims, A. C. P. & White, A. C. (1973) Co-existence of the Capgras' and de Clerambault's syndrome – a case history. British Journal of Psychiatry, 123, 635–638.Google Scholar
Slaoe, P. D. & Bentall, R. P. (1988) Sensory Deception: A Scientific Analysis of Hallucinations. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Smock, C. (1955) The influence of stress on the perception of incongruity. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 50, 354–356.Google Scholar
Sommer, R. (1959) The new look on the witness stand. Canadian Psychologist, 8, 94–99.Google Scholar
Staton, R. D., Brumback, R. A. & Wilson, H. (1982) Reduplicative paramnesia: a disconnection syndrome of memory. Cortex, 18, 23–36.Google Scholar
Stern, K. & MacNaughton, D. (1945) Capgras' syndrome, a peculiar illusory phenomena, considered with special reference to the Rorschach findings. Psychiatric Quarterly, 19, 139–163.Google Scholar
Stuss, D. T., Alexander, M. P., Lieberman, A., et at (1978) An extraordinary form of confabulation. Neurology, 28, 1166–1172.Google Scholar
Tarrier, N., Beckett, R., Harwood, S., et al (1990) Morbid jealousy: a review and cognitive-behavioural formulation. British Journal of Psychiatry, 157, 319–326.Google Scholar
Thompson, M. I., Silk, K. R. & Hover, G. L. (1980) Misidentification of a city: delimiting criteria for Capgras' syndrome. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137, 1270–1272.Google ScholarPubMed
Todd, J. (1975) The syndrome of Capgras. Psychiatric Quarterly, 31, 250–265.Google Scholar
Todd, J., Dewhurst, K. & Wallis, G. (1981) The syndrome of Capgras. British Journal of Psychiatry, 139, 319–327.Google Scholar
Tyrer, P., Lewis, P. & Lee, I. (1978) Effects of subliminal and supraliminal stress on symptoms of anxiety. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 166, 88–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wallis, G. (1986) Nature of the misidentified in the Capgras syndrome. Bibliotheca Psychiatrica, 164, 40–48.Google Scholar
Weckowicz, T. E. (1960) Perception of hidden figures by schizophrenic patients. Archives of General Psychiatry, 2, 521–527.Google Scholar
Weiss, H. S. (1984) An organic etiology for Capgras' syndrome? American Journal of Psychiatry, 141, 615.Google Scholar
Wilcox, J. A. (1986) The anatomical basis of misidentification. Bibliotheca Psychiatrica, 164, 59–67.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1958) The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wittreich, W. J. (1952) The Honi phenomenon: a case of selective personal distortion. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 47, 705–712.Google Scholar
Woodworth, R. S. (1947) Reinforcement of perception. American Journal of Psychology, 66, 119–124.Google Scholar
Young, A. W., Ellis, H. D., Szulecka, T. K., et al (1990) Face processing impairments and delusional misidentification. Behavioural Neurology, 3, 153–168.Google Scholar
Zajonc, R. B. (1980) Feeling and thinking: preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151–175.Google Scholar
Zangwill, O. L. (1987) Figural after-effects. In The Oxford Companion to the Mind (ed. Gregory, R. L.), p. 263. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.