Social cognition and schizophrenia

Objectives A cardinal feature of schizophrenia is the patient's difficulty in interacting appropriately within the social milieu. Patients appear to misinterpret social cues and show difficulties in recognizing different aspects of the social environment. Successful social interaction denotes the decoding of affective information from the facial expression of our counterpart and the evaluation of the affective content of the present situation. The present study investigates the integration of affective and social stimuli in schizophrenic patients. Methods Sixteen healthy controls and 16 schizophrenic patients participated. Affective faces and affective situations were presented simultaneously and the subjects were asked to indicate by button press whether the expression of the face matches or mismatches the emotional content of the situation. Results Schizophrenic patients compared to healthy controls show higher error rates and longer reaction times. Nevertheless the reduced performance was above chance-level. Conclusion These results suggest an impairment of the ability of mind reading or mentalizing in schizophrenic patients. Patients are not able to integrate affective and social information. The impairment of these integration in schizophrenic patients may form the basis of their difficulties to react appropriately in social situations.