Neuropsychological Study On Social Cognition In Schizophrenia

Objective Schizophrenia is a persistent psychotic illness associated with deficits in social functioning. Impairments of social cognition in people with schizophrenia are an important reason for their deficits in social competence. Examed if schizophrenics showed lower abilities of social cognition, found the relations between social cognition and social functioning and the evidence of the damage of orbito-frontal cortex in schizophrenia.Methods Social cues recognition abilities were measured by three tasks: Eye gaze discrimination task, Eye basic emotion discrimination task and Faux pas recognition task. Social problem solving abilities were also measured with three tasks: Sequencing of Social Stimuli task, Means-Ends Problem-Solving task and Iowa gambling task. Social functioning was assessed by Social Functioning Scale. We observed the correlation between social cognition and social functioning by pearson correlation analysis. Faux pas recognition task and Iowa gambling task were also measured in orbito-frontal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex damage patients.Results Schizophrenics performed significantly poorer in all social cognition tasks than controls. Correlation analysis revealed significant relation between some social cognition abilities and particularly social functioning of SFS in Schizophrenics. Schizophrenics were similar to orbito-frontal cortex damage patients in Faux pas recognition task and Iowa gambling task , but different to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex damage patients and controls.