The role of emotional awareness in cognitive-perceptual disturbances in schizotypy

Abstract

One conceptualization of emotional awareness is described as attention to one’s emotions and clarity of one’s emotions. Clarity has been further divided into source awareness (i.e., knowing the causes of emotions) and type awareness (identifying actual emotions). Emotional awareness has been examined in relation to suspiciousness, one of four cognitive-perceptual disturbances in schizotypy. Studies have not, however, examined all three facets of emotional awareness in the other three cognitive-perceptual disturbances and have not examined attributional styles in conjunction with emotional awareness and their relation to cognitive-perceptual disturbances in schizotypy. In addition, previous studies have not examined self-report measures of emotional awareness in conjunction with behavioral/qualitative measures. The current study examined these factors using a cross-sectional design. In this study, 178 undergraduates completed self-report measures of emotional awareness, cognitive-perceptual disturbances, emotional arousal, and attributional style, in addition to completing behavioral tasks assessing type awareness and attention to emotions and a qualitative interview assessing source awareness. Results showed that low type awareness significantly predicted ideas of reference (after controlling for emotional arousal, source awareness, and attention to emotions) and suspiciousness (after controlling for sex, emotional arousal, attention, and source awareness). In addition, low internality for negative events was significantly associated with suspiciousness and odd beliefs/magical thinking. These findings build upon previous work in this area and have implications for potential treatments for cognitive and perceptual disturbances associated with schizotypy. Future directions for additional research are also discussed.