Parental bonding, attachment, reality discrimination, and psychotic-like experiences

Psychological models of psychotic experiences suggest that social adversity (e.g., difficult family relationships, bullying) and anomalous percepts play an important role in the development of paranoid thinking, while intrusive cognitions and problems in reality discrimination play an important role in the development of auditory hallucinations (AH). The studies reported in this thesis examined a number of research questions relevant to these models, by investigating psychotic experiences in non-clinical populations (typically referred to as psychotic-like experiences, or PLEs). In Study 1 it was shown that the association between poor parental bonding and PLEs is mediated by individual differences in exposure to bullying and levels of negative affect. In Study 2 it was shown that associations between insecure attachment styles and paranoid thinking are mediated by individual differences in loneliness. In Study 3 it was shown that the association between experiencing anomalous percepts and paranoid thinking is moderated by individual differences in attachment anxiety. In Study 4 it was shown that the association between experiencing intrusive thoughts and AH-proneness is moderated by individual differences in reality discrimination skills. Finally, in Study 5 it was shown that a person’s reality discrimination abilities can be weakened through the induction of a negative mood. The studies included in this thesis, therefore, show how a variety of social, emotional, and cognitive factors interact with each other to foster or preclude the development of PLEs in ways that extend current psychological models of AH and paranoid thinking

Peer Mentoring-a pilot study to compare the viability of two virtual environments for student support

Support systems are vital for new students at university and one of the established means of support on offer at many universities is peer mentoring which, through a community of practice, has the potential to aid student retention and increase student engagement. Peer mentoring models are generally based on face-to-face contact. However, given the increasing number of higher education institutions using various social media and some of the practical problems concerned with face to face mentoring meetings, might online models be beneficial in a peer mentoring context? Newcastle Business School in 2010/2011 will be piloting two potential virtual models based on new technologies to create a community of practice which aims to improve and extend the transition, induction and learning experience of students on Business and Management Programmes. It is anticipated that this proactive approach will also install a sense of programme identity through social interaction across year cohorts, with newly enrolled students in particular benefiting from the experiences of more experienced course colleagues. The two models examined are the virtual learning environment (VLE) and social networking site Facebook. The VLE is established in higher education but lacks excitement. In addition technical restrictions mean access is only available post enrolment. Social networking sites like Facebook are freely available, popular and heavily used particularly by younger students but literature suggest there may be resentment if this appears to be appropriated by the HEI. This paper will report on the research findings which led to the choice of models as wells as outline the pilot project in more depth

Measurement practices in hallucinations research

In several sub-fields of psychology, there has been a renewed focus on measurement practices. As far as we are aware, this has been absent in hallucinations research. Thus, we investigated (a) cross-study variation in how hallucinatory experiences are measured and (b) the reliability of measurements obtained using two tasks that are widely employed in hallucinations research

Development of a readiness ruler for use with alcohol brief interventions

Background A quick method of assessing readiness to change was needed for a major study of implementing screening and alcohol brief intervention in England. For this purpose, a Readiness Ruler that had been validated among a sample of male college students in the USA was adapted and applied to a sample of excessive drinkers in a general medical practice located in a deprived area of Gateshead, England. Methods 72 participants identified as excessive drinkers by health professionals completed a single-item Readiness Ruler, the 12-item Readiness to Change Questionnaire (RCQ) and the AUDIT questionnaire. Results In terms of concurrent validity, the relationships between the Readiness Ruler, on the one hand, and either stage of change allocation or a dimensional score derived from the RCQ, on the other hand, were highly significant but weaker than expected. When patients who endorsed the “maintenance” point on the Readiness Ruler were excluded from the analysis, the above relationships were considerably strengthened for reasons that are discussed. On this basis and with another small change, a final Readiness Ruler was developed. Conclusion If the validity of the Readiness Ruler is confirmed in subsequent research, a quick and simple way of measuring readiness to change will be available for research or clinical work with alcohol brief interventions

Pareidolia-proneness, reality discrimination errors, and visual hallucination-like experiences in a non-clinical sample

Introduction: It has been proposed that hallucinations occur because of problems with reality discrimination (when internal, self-generated cognitions are misattributed to an external, non-self source) and because of elevated levels of top-down processing. In this study, we examined whether visual reality discrimination abilities and elevated top-down processing (assessed via face pareidolia-proneness) were associated with how often non-clinical participants report visual hallucination-like experiences. Methods: Participants (N = 82, mean age = 23.12 years) completed a visual reality discrimination task and a face pareidolia task, as well as self-report measures of schizotypy and of the frequency of visual hallucination-like experiences. Results: Regression analysis demonstrated that the number of false alarms made on the visual reality discrimination task and the number of hits made on the face pareidolia task were independent predictors of the frequency of visual hallucination-like experiences. Correlations between performance on the tasks and levels of schizotypy were not statistically significant. Conclusions: These findings suggest that weaker visual reality discrimination abilities and elevated levels of top-down processing are associated with visual hallucination-proneness and are discussed in terms of the idea that clinical visual hallucinations and non-clinical visual hallucination-like experiences share similar cognitive mechanisms

Development of a power system model For Strathfarm

[Strathfarm is the University of Strathclyde’s in in-house wind farm modelling software which uses Matlab and Simulink to simulate up to 100 wind turbines in real time. It does this while also modelling changes in component bending moments to a high level of accuracy similar to Bladed (Hur & Leithead 2018). Previous research in Strathfarm for providing grid support has assumed a static grid model where the response of the wind farm has not been included in the grid modelling. By including this the efficacy of the previously developed dispatch algorithms for droop and inertial response can be tested.

Tailoring cognitive behavioural therapy to subtypes of voice-hearing using a novel tabletised manual: a feasibility study

Background: Cognitive behavioural therapy for psychosis (CBTp) is a recommended treatment for psychotic experiences, but its effectiveness has been questioned. One way of addressing this may be to tailor therapy materials to the phenomenology of specific psychotic experiences. Aim: In this study, we investigated the acceptability of a novel treatment manual for subtypes of 'voice-hearing' experiences (i.e. auditory verbal hallucinations). An uncontrolled, single-arm design was used to assess feasibility and acceptability of using the manual in routine care for people with frequent voice-hearing experiences. Method: The manual was delivered on a smart tablet and incorporated recent research evidence and theory into its psychoeducation materials. In total, 24 participants completed a baseline assessment; 19 started treatment, 15 completed treatment and 12 participants completed a follow-up assessment (after 10 sessions of using the manual). Results: Satisfaction with therapy scores and acceptability ratings were high, while completion rates suggested that the manual may be more appropriate for help with participants from Early Intervention in Psychosis services rather than Community Mental Health Teams. Conclusion: Within-group changes in symptom scores suggested that overall symptom severity of hallucinations - but not other psychosis features, or beliefs about voices - are likely to be the most appropriate primary outcome for further evaluation in a full randomised controlled trial

Wind farm control for improved battery lifetime in green hydrogen systems without a grid connection

Green hydrogen is likely to play an important role in meeting the net-zero targets of countries around the globe. One potential option for green hydrogen production is to run electrolysers directly from offshore wind turbines, with no grid connection and hence no expensive cabling to shore. In this work, an innovative proof of concept of a wind farm control methodology designed to reduce variability in wind farm active power output is presented. Smoothing the power supplied by the wind farm to the battery reduces the size and number of battery charge cycles and helps to increase battery lifetime. This work quantifies the impact of the wind farm control method on battery lifetime for wind farms of 1, 4, 9 and 16 wind turbines using suitable wind farm, battery and electrolyser models. The work presented shows that wind farm control for smoothing wind farm power output could play a critical role in reducing the levelised cost of green hydrogen produced from wind farms with no grid connection by reducing the damaging load cycles on batteries in the system. Hence, this work paves the way for the design and testing of a full implementation of the wind farm controller

Correlates of hallucinatory experiences in the general population: an international multi-site replication study

Hallucinatory experiences can occur in both clinical and nonclinical groups. However, in previous studies of the general population, investigations of the cognitive mechanisms underlying hallucinatory experiences have yielded inconsistent results. We ran a large-scale preregistered multisite study, in which general-population participants (N = 1,394 across 11 data-collection sites and online) completed assessments of hallucinatory experiences, a measure of adverse childhood experiences, and four tasks: source memory, dichotic listening, backward digit span, and auditory signal detection. We found that hallucinatory experiences were associated with a higher false-alarm rate on the signal detection task and a greater number of reported adverse childhood experiences but not with any of the other cognitive measures employed. These findings are an important step in improving reproducibility in hallucinations research and suggest that the replicability of some findings regarding cognition in clinical samples needs to be investigated