ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a novel experimental investigation of hypervigilance in individuals with anxiety disorder and individuals with persecutory delusions. Hypervigilance is seen as an excessive use of the processes involved in threat detection, which results in individuals detecting the environment as very threatening. Hypervigilance is seen as an excessive use of the processes involved in threat detection, which results in individuals detecting the environment as very threatening. Hypervigilance-type biases have previously been hypothesised to occur in people with delusions. Persecutory delusions evolve as a defence, 'the danger, which used to be an internal one, is now transformed by the psychosis into an external one'. Ten individuals in the persecutory group met the Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders criteria for paranoid schizophrenia and one person met the criteria for delusional disorder. In addition, individuals with persecutory delusions were assessed with the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms and the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms.
