Impaired prediction of ongoing events in posttraumatic stress disorder

The ability to make accurate predictions about what is going to happen in the near future iscritical for comprehension of everyday activity. However, predictive processing may be disrupted in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Hypervigilance may lead people with PTSD to make inaccurate predictions about the likelihood of future danger. This disruption in predictive processing may occur not only in response to threatening stimuli, but also during processing of neutral stimuli. Therefore, the current study investigated whether people with PTSD experienced difficulty making predictions about near-future neutral activity. Sixty-three participants with PTSD and 63 trauma controls completed two tasks, one testing explicit prediction and the other testing implicit prediction. Participants in the PTSD group displayed worse performance on these tasks, suggesting that PTSD affects predictive processing of neutral, everyday activity. These results suggest that interventions aimed at improving prediction may be important for improvements in functional outcomes in PTSD.