Appraisal of self-reference, delusional ideation and memory in a normal sample

I investigated whether self-referent appraisal bias (SRB) mediates the relation between delusional thinking and self-referent memory (SRM). Forty normal adults participated. Participants rated how much 80 statements were about them on a five-point scale and the ratings were summed to operationalize SRB. Corrected hit rate (Pr) from an incidental recognition memory test for these statements was the dependent measure of SRM. Peters Delusion Inventory (PDI) scores correlated with Pr (r=-.34) and there was a trend toward correlation between SRB and Pr (r=-.25). SRB mediated the relation between PDI score and Pr with age, standardized memory and language achievement scores as covariates (Baron & Kenny, 1986). Bootstrapping analyses confirmed that the change in the model was significant with SRB as a mediator. These findings suggest that individual differences, such as SRB, mediate SRM performance. This suggests that such subtle biases could mediate cognitive impairment in psychosis, which has implications for treatment.