Deficits in reality and internal source monitoring of actions are associated with the positive dimension of schizotypy

People with schizophrenia have deficits in retrieving the source of memory information. Research has focused on two types of judgements: reality monitoring (discriminating internally-generated stimuli from external information) and internal source monitoring (distinguishing two different internal sources). The aim of the current study was to assess the relation between schizotypy and both types of source memory in healthy volunteers. One hundred and two participants completed two source memory tasks: one involved the completion of well-known word pairs (e.g. Fish and? ) and the other was an action based task (e.g. nod your head). At test participants needed to indicate whether the act had been performed or imagined by themselves, performed by the experimenter, or was new. The positive dimension of schizotypy was positively correlated with errors in internal source monitoring i.e. confusing participant performed and imagined acts. Furthermore, the same dimension of schizotypy was also positively associated with reality monitoring errors i.e. confusing participant performed/imagined with experimenter performed items. However, these relationships were not found in the word pair task. Our findings suggest that there might be overlap in the processes required to retrieve source information from memory, particularly for actions, and the occurrence of unusual experiences in healthy volunteers.