The role of sleep health and cognitive control in the occurrence of hallucinatory experiences

Poor sleep appears to play a causal role in the development of hallucinatory experiences in clinical and non-clinical populations. It has been suggested that cognitive control processes might mediate this relationship. This investigation explored the association between hallucinatory experiences, sleep health, and cognitive control within the general population. Two online studies using self-report measures and cognitive tasks were conducted to identify cognitive correlates of sleep health and hallucinatory experiences (N = 211), and investigate whether cognitive control mediated the relationship between sleep health and hallucinatory experiences (N = 216). Both studies found that sleep health and thought control ability, but not intentional inhibition or working memory, predicted hallucinatory experiences. Further analysis demonstrated that thought control partially mediated the relationship between sleep health and hallucinatory experiences. Future directions and clinical implications are discussed. Preregistrations, materials, data, and code are available at doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XYU5D.