The Abnormal Processing Of Social Interactive Information In Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a severe and complex psychiatric disorder with various causes.Patients often experience symptoms such as delusions,hallucinations,and disorganized thoughts.The neurocognitive and social cognitive functions of such patients are generally impaired and difficult to effectively alleviate with antipsychotic medication.As neurocognition and social cognition are important factors affecting treatment outcomes,extensive research has been stimulated in this field.In recent years,research in this field has gradually focused on social cognition,but more attention has been paid to single social stimuli situations,and studies related to the important content of “social interaction” have been lacking.In daily social life,interactions between two or more individuals are common.Therefore,this study focuses mainly on the social cognition of schizophrenia patients in interactive situations.This study systematically investigates whether individuals with schizophrenia exhibit abnormal early unconscious processing,working memory,and long-term memory processing of social interactive information through two behavioral experiments involving three tasks.A total of 26 stable schizophrenia patients who were receiving medication and 26 healthy control subjects matched to the patients were recruited for both experiments.The classic study of social interaction employed face-to-face/back-to-back dyads to represent conditions of social interaction/non-social interaction,respectively.In line with that design,the current study employed the breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm(Experiment 1),a working memory task involving dyad spatial distance,and a long-term memory task involving dyad matching relationship(Experiment 2)to explore whether patients with schizophrenia exhibit abnormal processing of social interaction information.The results indicated that,under face-to-face social interaction conditions,healthy control subjects demonstrated an advantage in breaking continuous flash suppression time compared to back-to-back non-social interaction conditions.Additionally,they exhibited better memory for face-to-face interactive dyads,accurately recalling the interactive information associated with those dyads.However,unlike the healthy control group:(1)schizophrenia patients did not show an advantage in breaking continuous flash suppression time when compared with non-face-to-face conditions;(2)the patients did not remember face-to-face interactive information closer than back-to-back conditions;(3)the patients did not recall face-to-face interactive information more accurately.Based on the above results,it can be concluded that schizophrenia patients have abnormalities in early unconscious processing,working memory,and long-term memory processing of social interactive information.This study deepens our understanding of social cognition in schizophrenia patients,and the relevant results provide a basis for further revealing the neurophysiological mechanisms behind these abnormalities,and also provide a theoretical basis for social cognition treatment of schizophrenia patients.