Ian Apperly

2 papers in the library · 1 citation · publishing 2011-2026

Papers

Reality monitoring across disorders of reality: Systematic and narrative reviews of dissociation and psychosis

Journal of Psychiatric Research January 19, 2026 Gwynnevere Suter, Ian Apperly, L. Zhang et al. 1 citation

Reality monitoring—the ability to remember whether information came from one's own mind or from the outside world—is often impaired in clinical conditions, but no prior review had compared this ability across dissociation and psychosis. A systematic review of four high-quality papers (482 participants) found a small but significant negative association between reality monitoring and dissociation, indicating slight impairment. A narrative review of psychosis showed that clinical psychosis is robustly linked to impaired reality monitoring and an externalizing bias (attributing internal information to an external source), while results for non-clinical psychotic-like experiences were mixed. Comparing the two fields suggests a shared cognitive basis, but no studies have examined clinical dissociation or source-attribution biases, leaving the comparison incomplete.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2026.01.021 Reality testing Dissociation chemistry Psychosis Cognition +7

Cognitive correlates of the spontaneous out-of-body experience (OBE) in the psychologically normal population: evidence for an increased role of temporal-lobe instability, body-distortion processing, and impairments in own-body transformations.

Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior January 1, 2011 Jason J Braithwaite, Dana Samson, Ian Apperly et al.

People who report out-of-body experiences (OBEs) show more perceptual anomalies, particularly related to temporal-lobe instability and body-distortion processing, and are impaired at mentally transforming their own body. Two studies with university students found that 26% reported at least one OBE. OBEers scored higher on the Cardiff anomalous perception scale, and those with elevated temporal-lobe or body-distortion measures performed worse on a mental own-body transformation task. These results extend findings from epileptic patients to the general population, suggesting disrupted temporal-lobe and body-based processing underlies OBE-type experiences.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2010.05.002 Full text