The Functional Significance of Social Cognition in Schizophrenia: A Review (original) (raw)
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Social cognition: the key factor predicting social outcome in people with schizophrenia?
Psychiatry (Edgmont (Pa. : Township)), 2010
Impairments in different cognitive abilities have been found to be correlated with reduced real-world functioning in people with schizophrenia. A number of other features of the illness, such as depression and negative symptoms, contribute to the overall prediction of these outcomes. Impairment in social cognition is of particular interest as a mediating influence between cognition and social outcomes. Social cognition is a set of cognitive processes applied to the recognition, understanding, accurate processing, and effective use of social cues in real-world situations. In schizophrenia research, social cognition comprises the following domains: emotion perception, theory of mind (ToM), and attributional style. While substantial research has indicated that these abilities are clearly related to social outcomes, research has been slowed by problems in the measurement of these abilities. In this article, I will describe these abilities, discuss how they are currently measured, and ho...
Objectives: Patients with schizophrenia are characterized with deficiencies in various aspects of social functioning. Given the relationship between social functioning deficits and relapse in these patients, identification of underlying factors is of significant importance. Thus, in this study, the contribution of each dimension of social cognition (Emotion Perception [EP], Theory of Mind [ToM] and Attributional Style [AS]) in predicting the social function of schizophrenic patients were examined. Methods: The statistical population included all patients with chronic schizophrenia hospitalized in Shiraz chronic healthcare centers. Of them, a total of 62 patients with schizophrenia disorder were selected based on purposive sampling method from three chronic care centers and were evaluated using social cognition tools (Hinting Task, Face Emotion Identification Task, and The Ambiguous Intentions and Hostility Questionnaire) and the Social Functioning Scale (SFS). Results: The results showed that ToM and EP predicted social functioning in people with schizophrenia but attributional style was not associated with social functioning. Discussion: On the whole, ToM and EP are general abilities contributing in explaining social functioning. However, the importance of attributional bias is significant when evaluating the performance of a person in specific areas such as aggressive behaviors.
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 2009
The objective of this study was to examine the unique contribution of social cognition to the prediction of community functioning and to explore the relevance of social cognition for clinical practice. Forty-six schizophrenia patients and 53 healthy controls were assessed with tests of social cognition [emotion perception and Theory of Mind (ToM)], general cognition, and, within the patient sample, psychiatric symptoms. Community functioning was rated by nurses or family members. Social cognition was a better predictor of community functioning than general cognition or psychiatric symptoms. When the contributions of emotion perception and ToM were examined separately, only ToM contributed significantly to the prediction of community functioning. Independent living skills were poor in patients with impaired social cognition. In controls, social cognition was not related to community functioning. ToM was the best predictor of community functioning in schizophrenia. However, to fully u...
Social Cognition and Social Skills in Schizophrenia: The Role of Self-Monitoring
The Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease, 1999
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2016
Schizophrenia exerts its devastating effects mostly by causing a profound and poorly understood inability to function, affecting different aspects of everyday life from daily activities to a lack of social contacts, unemployment, and the consequences of stigmatisation. In empirical studies, social dysfunction is defined as a social performance measure, commonly based on the principles of cognitivism, and usually evaluated in laboratory and everyday settings. In schizophrenia, it is thought to be caused by cognitive dysfunction, related to brain dysfunction. From a medical perspective, schizophrenia is understood as a neurodevelopmental disorder resulting in a pattern of disconnection between important brain areas. Nevertheless, measures of neurocognition do not explain the expected amount of variance in social functioning. Other explanatory models of social dysfunction include structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and clinical phenomenology. Phenomenological accounts re...
Insight in social behavioral dysfunction in schizophrenia: Preliminary study
Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 2008
Previous studies have demonstrated attenuated insight among schizophrenia subjects about having a mental disorder and about their psychopathology. Few studies, however, have investigated in detail patients' unconcern for their social behavioral problems. Using the subjective and objective versions of the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale (FrSBe), the nature of awareness of social behavioral problems was investigated in chronic schizophrenia subjects. First, schizophrenia subjects were found to have problems in three major domains of social behavior: apathy, disinhibition, and executive dysfunction. Second, awareness, estimated by the difference between the subjective and objective ratings, was not uniformly disturbed in schizophrenia subjects, although it had a significant interaction with the subjects' estimated IQs: subjects with higher IQs had a tendency to overestimate their problems, while those with lower IQs had the opposite tendency. Third, the same pattern of interaction was demonstrated for the retrospective premorbid ratings of FrSBe. Awareness among schizophrenia subjects of their social behavioral problems is affected by their cognitive capacity, and this applies not only to current behaviors but also to the retrospective estimation of their behaviors in the social domain.
Health Qual Life Outcomes, 2004
Background: Research has indicated that stable individual differences in personality exist among persons with schizophrenia spectrum disorders predating illness onset that are linked to symptoms and self appraised quality of life. Less is known about how closely individual differences in personality are uniquely related to levels of social relationships, a domain of dysfunction in schizophrenia more often linked in the literature with symptoms and neurocognitive deficits. This study tested the hypothesis that trait levels of personality as defined using the five-factor model of personality would be linked to social function in schizophrenia.
Criterion B (social dysfunction) in persons with schizophrenia: the puzzle
Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 2007
This review focuses on social dysfunction in persons with schizophrenia and addresses three main questions. What is the core ability that is disordered in social dysfunction according to mainstream paradigms? How is social dysfunction primarily assessed in current research? Which levels of personal experience, and which trans-personal and sub-personal factors, are assessed by mainstream empirical research? Recent findings Empirical studies on social dysfunction include research on trans-personal factors (stigma, availability of social and psychiatric facilities, and family resources), sub-personal factors (neurocognition) and personal factors (social cognition, coping and noncognitive factors). The main recent findings of these approaches are described and commented upon. Inconsistencies between studies are identified. Summary What is it like to be a person with schizophrenia in the social world? Building upon empirical research, we can finally address this question. We argue that more qualitative research is needed into the reasons that persons with schizophrenia have for adopting or embracing their given type of relatedness to the others.