Aberrant Salience Inventory: A meta-analysis to investigate its psychometric properties and identify screening cutoff scores.

INTRODUCTION: The Aberrant Salience Inventory (ASI) is a useful tool to measure salience abnormalities among the general population. There is strong clinical and scientific evidence that salience alteration is linked to psychosis. To the present day, no meta-analysis evaluating ASI's psychometric properties and screening potential has been published. MATERIALS AND METHODS: PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Embase were searched using terms including "psychosis," "schizophrenia," and "Aberrant Salience Inventory." Observational and experimental studies employing ASI on populations of non-psychotic controls and patients with psychosis were included. ASI scores and other demographic measures (age, gender, ethnicity) were extracted as outcomes. Individual patients' data (IPD) were collected. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed on the IPD. RESULTS: Eight articles were finally included in the meta-analysis. ASI scores differ significantly between psychotic and non-psychotic populations; a novel three-factor model is proposed regarding subscales structure. Theoretical positive predictive values (PPVs) and negative predictive values (NPVs) were calculated and presented together with different cutoff points depending on preselected specific populations of interest. DISCUSSION: PPV and NPV values reached levels adequate for ASI to be considered a viable screening tool for psychosis. The factor analysis highlights the presence of a novel subscale that was named "Unveiling experiences." Implications regarding the meaning of the new factor structure are discussed, as well as ASI's potential as a screening tool.

Decreased Self-Concept Clarity in People with Schizophrenia.

Disturbances in the perception of self are thought to be central to the development of psychosis. Self-concept clarity (SCC) is the extent to which one's beliefs about oneself are internally consistent, stable, and clear. Participants with schizophrenia (N = 54) and healthy controls (N = 32) completed the Me Not-Me Decision Task (MNMDT), in which they decided whether 60 adjectives (30 pairs of antonyms) did or did not describe themselves. SCC is conceptualized as the number of consistent responses. Participants also completed the Self-Concept Clarity Scale (SCCS). Compared to healthy controls, participants with schizophrenia scored lower on the MNMDT and SCCS, and scores were negatively correlated with positive and negative symptoms. In a simultaneous regression, SCCS scores were uniquely associated with positive symptoms, whereas MNMDT scores were uniquely associated with negative symptoms. This suggests that people with schizophrenia have decreased self-concept clarity that is related to positive and negative symptoms.