ABSTRACT
The most commonly associated with psychiatric disorders, it is now acknowledged that, during their lifetime, about 28 percent of the general population may have quasi-psychotic experiences, at least as detected by screening questions in the US National Comorbidity Survey. These may include hallucinations, passivity phenomena, and overvalued or delusional ideas. This chapter outlines a range of non-pharmacological research strategies to provoke such experiences, with a view to studying their relevance to schizotypy. It provides a synopsis of the variety of experimental techniques available for the induction of anomalous experiences in the normal population and to report their relationship with schizotypal traits. The chapter hypothesise that alexithymia may lead to an enhanced ability to detach from personal experience, increasing the intensity with which altered states may be experienced. The most basic reports described noticing variation within the audiovisual environment. The more complex reports incorporated descriptions of a percept's cause, location, direction of movement and effects of the environment.
