Understanding interactions between meta-cognition and social behaviour in a psychosis prone population

This project proposes to 1) investigate the specific causal mechanisms of metacognitive deficits in individuals with psychosis 2) ask whether these deficits lead to real world outcomes 3) investigate whether pathological uncertainty is seen in the neurotypical population scoring highly on psychometric schizotypy 4) investigate whether emotion interacts with metacognitive deficits in psychosis.

The project builds on the concepts of 'metacognition' and 'self-reflectivity'.

Head Mounted Display (HMD) Virtual Reality (VR) will be used.

Anticipated outcomes for this study includes a developed understanding of the mechanisms behind both global metacognition and metacognitive deficits in schizophrenia. This has the potential to explain the vast heterogeneity in the literature including divergent treatment responses. The proposed study will disentangle the effects of emotion on social cognition (accuracy) and metacognition (confidence), which currently holds conflicting evidence.

Finally, the inclusion of HMDVR will promote both novel and more accurate progress tracking (assessment) and remission warning (prevention) procedures, and VR as a potential therapy of metacognitive deficits in schizophrenia (intervention).