The role of self-disturbances and cognitive biases in the relationship between traumatic life events and psychosis proneness in a non-clinical sample Łukasz Gawęda a,b, ⁎, Katarzyna Prochwicz c , Przemysław Adamczyk d,k , Dorota Frydecka e ,Błażej Misiak f , Kamila Kotowicz e , Remigiusz Szczepanowski g , Marcin Florkowski h , Barnaby Nelson i,j a Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany b II Department of Psychiatry, Medical University of Warsaw, Poland c Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland d Department of Community Psychiatry, Chair of Psychiatry, Medical College, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland e Department of Psychiatry, Wroclaw Medical University, Poland f Department of Genetics, Wroclaw Medical University, Poland g Faculty of Psychology in Wroclaw, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland h Faculty of Education, Psychology and Sociology, University of Zielona Gora, Poland i Orygen, The National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, The University of Melbourne, Australia j Centre for Youth Mental Health, The University of Melbourne, Australia k Psychophysiology Laboratory, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland abstract article info Article history: Received 25 January 2017 Received in revised form 8 July 2017 Accepted 9 July 2017 Available online xxxx Background: Traumatic life events have been established as an environmental risk factor for psychosis. However, the exact mechanisms by which traumatic life events increase risk for psychosis are unknown. In the present study we tested an integrative model of traumatic life events being related to psychosis proneness via self-distur- bances and cognitive biases. Methods: The sample consisted of 653 healthy people. Traumatic life events, self-disturbances, cognitive biases and psychosis proneness were assessed with self-report questionnaires. The direct and an indirect model of the relationship between traumatic life events and psychosis proneness were compared using path analyses with structural equation modelling in a cross-sectional study. Results: There was a significant direct effect of traumatic life events on psychosis proneness. However, path anal- ysis suggested better fit of the indirect model including paths from trauma to psychosis proneness via cognitive biases and self-disturbances. There were significant paths from traumatic life events to cognitive biases and self- disorders. Self-disorders significantly predicted cognitive biases. Finally, cognitive biases and self-disorders sig- nificantly predicted psychosis proneness. Exclusion of any paths, apart from direct path in the model, significant- ly reduced model fitness. Discussion: The results revealed that a direct relationship between trauma and psychosis proneness became insig- nificant when taking into account the influence of self-disorders and cognitive biases. This suggests that the interac- tions between disrupted self-experience, impaired information processing and traumatic life events are of importance in psychosis proneness. This model should be further tested in a longitudinal study on a clinical sample. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Traumatic life events Cognitive biases Self-disorders Psychotic-like experiences Psychosis 1. Introduction Traumatic life events (Varese et al., 2012; Velikonja et al., 2015) and cognitive biases (e.g. Gaweda and Prochwicz, 2015) are potential risk factors for both clinical psychosis as well as for psychosis proneness (i.e., increased frequency of psychotic-like experiences) in the general population. Furthermore, self-disturbances, defined as anomalies in the subjective experience of the self (Parnas and Henriksen, 2014), have been suggested as a core characteristic of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) (Parnas and Jansson, 2015; Sass, 2014). Interestingly, self-disturbances are reported in ultra-high risk (UHR) samples who seek (Koren et al., 2013; Nelson et al., 2012) and who do not seek help (Koren et al., 2016). Furthermore, self-disturbances have been found to be related to psychotic-like experiences in healthy people without psychosis (Cicero et al., 2016b; Torbet et al., 2015). Hence, self-distur- bances may be a very early factor related to psychosis proneness. Schizophrenia Research xxx (2017) xxx–xxx ⁎ Corresponding author at: Medical University Center Hamburg Eppendorf, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Hamburg, Germany. E-mail address: lgaweda@wum.edu.pl (Ł Gawęda). SCHRES-07417; No of Pages 7 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2017.07.023 0920-9964/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Schizophrenia Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/schres Please cite this article as: Gawęda, Ł, et al., The role of self-disturbances and cognitive biases in the relationship between traumatic life events and psychosis proneness in a ..., Schizophr. Res. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2017.07.023