Heroin Abusers' Social Cognitive Deficits

Drug abuse jeopardizes both the physical and mental health of the abuser,and often causes severe damage to their family,social,and economic wellbeing.Among all commonly abused drugs,heroin is the one with the greatest harm reflecting in its widespread use,proneness to relapse,serious physical damage,and close correlation with criminal behaviors.One of the most common symptoms of heroin abuse is disruptions in social functioning,which may be attributable to impaired social cognitive abilities.Thus,examining the relationship between heroin abuse and social cognitive deficits is required in understanding the cause of the abnormal social behaviors exhibited by heroin abusers.However,in the past decades,majority of research has been focused on the alteration of cognitive functions in heroin abusers,leaving the social cognitive functions relatively overlooked.The few research that did concern heroin abusers' social cognition concentrated almost exclusively on emotion perception,a limited area within social cognition.Moreover,these research that all conducted on North American and European subjects,who have significant differences from Chinese heroin abusers in terms of demographics and the environment they reside in.Therefore,the present study attempted to explore the effect of heroin abuse on social cognition in three distinct aspects,namely,empathy,theory of mind,and social perception.The study participants included abstinent heroin abusers who were undertaking compulsory rehabilitation programs as the experimental group,and misdemeanor crime convicts who were serving the sentence in the prison as the match control group.The aim of the study was to further expand the theory of addiction with social cognition integrated within,and provide theoretical support for the development of more effective and targeting treatments for heroin addicts.The present study consists of three sections.First section explored heroin abusers' deficits in empathy via two questionnaires and one test,that is,the Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy,and the Empathy Quotient Questionnaire,and the Reading the Mind in the Eye Task.Second section employed the Yoni Task and the Perception Taking Task to behaviorally examine the ability of theory of mind among heroin abusers in comparison with the control group.Third section tested participants with the Chasing Task,Biological Motion Task and the Gaze Cue Dot Probe Task to investigate the social perception abilities,including the perception of animacy,social approach bias in biological motion,and social attention,on heroin abusers.The main findings included the following:(1)Heroin abusers exhibit deficits in empathy.(2)Heroin abusers are impaired in theory of mind.(3)Heroin abusers illustrate deficits in social perceptions.(4)The deficits of social cognition on heroin abusers do not improve along with the extension of length of abstinence.