A Correlation Study Of The Emotions Empathy、Cognitive Empathy And Executive Function In Schizophrenic Patients

Schizophrenia is a common mental illness, the symptom of the schizophrenia isgeneral performance the obstacles of perception, thinking, feeling, act of will, andmany others. Their mental activities with the surrounding environment and innerexperience are uncoordinated. The research shows the schizophrenia patients withexecutive dysfunction and accompanied with empathy defects. The empathy is theability, which individual identifies and distinguishes for the moods of others, andunderstands the feelings and needs of others at own point of view, it paly theimportant role in the interpersonal. In previous studies, empathy and executivefunction often regard as two independent variables in the study of schizophrenia, butit lack of a systematic study. Because the breadth of the definition of empathy, there isno one agreed applicable standards. This study divided empathy into emotionalempathy and cognitive empathy in order to explore the mechanisms of empathy andexecutive function which can help us to understand and treatment of schizophrenia aswell as to promote their good interpersonal and social adaptation have greatsignificance.This study intends to explore the relationship between emotional empathy,cognitive empathy and executive function. This paper used the methods whichintegrated Questionnaire Investigation and Experiment and used the schizophreniawhere are from Bureau of Civil Affairs mental hospital in Guangzhou and healthycontrols. The founding are as following:(1) The schizophrenia’s empathy total scores and scores in perspective taking,fantasy and empathic concern are significantly lower than the healthy controls, but thepersonal distress are significantly higher than the healthy controls.(2) There is significantly different between the schizophrenic patients and thehealthy controls in executive function. The WCST shows that the schizophrenicpatients worse than control group in the total correct responses, categories completed, failure to maintain set and learning to learn. But in trials administered, random errors,perseverative errors, non-perseverative errors, trials to compete first category aresignificantly higher than the control group.(3) From the person correlation analysis shows there is correlate betweenempathy and executive function in schizophrenic patients. The empathy total sores arepositive correlate with the total correct responses, failure to maintain set, which arenegative correlate with total errors, trials to compete first category, non-perseverativeerrors. The perspective taking are negative correlate with trials administered, trials tocompete first category and perseverative errors. But it is positive correlate withcategories completed. The fantasy is positive correlate with total correct responses.The empathic concern is negative correlate with trials to compete first category. Thepersonal distress is positive correlate with failure to maintain set.(4) There is significantly different between the schizophrenic patients and thehealthy controls in emotion empathy. The schizophrenic patients in the anger andsadness emotions are lower than the control group. But there is no significantlydifferent in the happy, fear and calm emotions. In addition, there is no significantdifference in sex determination.(5) There is significantly different between the schizophrenic patients and thehealthy controls in cognitive empathy and story understanding.