• Simon R Jones and Charles Fernyhough.
• Department of Psychology, Durham University, South Road, Durham, UK. s.r.jones@durham.ac.uk
• Behav Res Ther. 2009 Jan 1; 47 (1): 54-9.

AbstractAlthough rumination has been proposed to play an important role in the creation of hallucinations, direct empirical tests of this proposal have not yet been performed. Employing a distinction between ruminative and reflective self-consciousness, we set out to test a new model of the relations among rumination, reflection, intrusive thoughts, thought suppression, social anxiety, and hallucination-proneness. This model proposed that rumination would be related to hallucination-proneness through the mediating variable of intrusive thoughts, but that reflection would not be related to hallucination-proneness. The model was tested in a student population (N=296) using path analyses. A modified version of the model was found to be a good fit to the data, once a direct path from reflection to hallucination-proneness had been added. As hypothesized, rumination was related to hallucination-proneness only indirectly, through the mediating variable of intrusive thoughts. Implications for interventions and future directions for research are considered.

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