When Kids Hear Their Name in an Empty Room

My Weird Prompts · Oct 3, 2026 · 20m

Most people picture a psychiatric ward when they hear the word "hallucination." The epidemiological literature says that picture is wrong. In a meta-analysis pooling nineteen population studies, median prevalence of psychotic symptoms was 17% in children aged 9–12 and 7.5% in adolescents — meaning these experiences are most common in childhood and decline with age, exactly the opposite of what you'd expect if they were an early sign of illness. This episode walks through the numbers, the "you can't tickle yourself" predictive-coding account of why a developing brain might mislabel its own…