Virtual reality insights into schizophrenic patients’ way to interpret an Avatar’s help (original) (raw)

With regards to the neurocognitive deficits and cognitive bias of schizophrenic disorders, it may be hypothesized that these patients suffer a deficit in recognizing helping intentions in others. To inves- tigate help recognition, new technologies allowing to control an interaction with virtual affective agents were used with an adap- tation of a previously described card-guessing paradigm (project COMPARSE ANR-11-EMCO-0007). We investigated whether the same game proposed successively by two virtual agents asking either empathetic (i.e. on the subject’s feelings) or non-empathetic (i.e. on technical aspects of the game) questions to the participant would elicit different interpretations on their intentions. Depend- ent variables consisted of monetary allocation to the virtual agent, of questionnaires assessing the agent’s help, interest, attention, etc. A group of 20 individuals with schizophrenia and one of 20 healthy controls, matched on gender, with comparable age, esti- mated verbal-IQ and educational level were recruited.