Assessing Explanatory Models of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations

Abstract: Many attempts have been made to explain the nature of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) or the phenomenon of “hearing voices”. In the contemporary discussion of auditory verbal hallucinations, the raw material of the voices of AVH is seen as either inner speech, a spontaneously activated auditory experience, or imagined speech. Some contemporary theories of AVH are self-proclaimed self-monitoring theories which claim that AVH are the result of a failure of self-monitoring of some raw material, while other theories claim that AVH are produced without a self-monitoring failure. In this paper, I argue that even the theories that claim to not rely on self-monitoring, are in fact selfmonitoring theories. I argue that any viable theory of AVH will need to be a self-monitoring theory. Further, I argue that Daniel Gregory’s imagined speech self-monitoring theory is the most parsimonious and complete of the explanatory theories of AVH since it is able to explain characteristics that other theories cannot, including AVH that take place in what seem to be the voices of others, perceived spatial location, intensity of sound, multiple voices, and the intermittent nature of AVH. Further, I show that the imagined speech theory can be well integrated into a general understanding of schizophrenia, while still retaining its explanatory power for all populations that experience AVH, not just schizophrenics, and that for these reasons, it is the strongest contemporary explanatory theory of auditory verbal hallucinations.