Fornells Ambrojo, MiriamFreeman, DanielSlater, MelSwapp, DavidAntley, AngusBarker, Chris2017-08-312017-08-3120151352-4658https://hdl.handle.net/2445/114816Environmental factors have been associated with psychosis but there is little qualitative research looking at how the ongoing interaction between individual and environment maintains psychotic symptoms. Aims: The current study investigates how people with persecutory delusions interpret events in a virtual neutral social environment using qualitative methodology. Method: 20 participants with persecutory delusions and 20 controls entered a virtual underground train containing neutral characters. Under these circumstances, people with persecutory delusions reported similar levels of paranoia as non-clinical participants. The transcripts of a post-virtual reality interview of the first 10 participants in each group were analysed. Results: Thematic analyses of interviews focusing on the decision making process associated with attributing intentions of computer-generated characters revealed 11 themes grouped in 3 main categories (evidence in favour of paranoid appraisals, evidence against paranoid appraisals, other behaviour). Conclusions: People with current persecutory delusions are able to use a range of similar strategies to healthy volunteers when making judgements about potential threat in a neutral environment that does not elicit anxiety, but they are less likely than controls to engage in active hypothesis-testing and instead favour experiencing 'affect' as evidence of persecutory intention19 p.application/pdfeng(c) British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies, 2015ParanoiaTeràpia cognitivaRealitat virtualParanoiaCognitive therapyVirtual realityinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article6563892017-08-31info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess24103196