Impaired Performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test in First-Episode Psychosis and Clinical High Risk for Psychosis

Abstract

Objective Although previous studies have reported impaired performance in the reading the mind in the eyes test (RMET), which measures complex emotion recognition abilities, in patients with schizophrenia, reports regarding individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis have been inconsistent, mainly due to the interacting confounding effects of general cognitive abilities and age. We compared RMET performances across first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients, CHR individuals, and healthy controls (HCs) while controlling for the effects of both general cognitive abilities and age.Methods A total of 25 FEP, 41 CHR, and 44 HC subjects matched for age participated in this study. RMET performance scores were compared across the groups using analysis of variance with sex and intelligence quotient as covariates. Exploratory Pearson’s correlation analyses were performed to reveal the potential relationships of RMET scores with clinical symptom severity in the FEP and CHR groups.Results RMET performance scores were significantly lower among FEP and CHR participants than among HCs. FEP patients and CHR subjects showed comparable RMET performance scores. RMET scores were negatively correlated with Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) positive symptom subscale scores in the FEP patients. No significant correlation was identified between RMET scores and other clinical scale scores.Conclusion Impaired RMET performance is present from the risk stage of psychosis, which might be related to positive symptom severity in early psychosis. Longitudinal studies are necessary to confirm the stability of complex emotion recognition impairments and their relationship with social functioning in early psychosis patients.

Neurobehavioral Indices of Gaze Perception are Associated with Social Cognition across Schizophrenia Patients and Healthy Controls

“…Behavioral results from the current study reinforce previous research on social cognitive deficits in SZ. We directly replicate past findings of reduced perceptual sensitivity and increased self-referential tendency during gaze perception in SZ 7,8 , as well as findings of reduced performance on the MSCEIT 11,76,77 , RME [78][79][80] , ER-40 69,80 , QCAE 81,82 , and SSPA 70,83 . In addition to replicating task-specific results, we extend previous work using latent variable modeling.…”

Characteristics of theory of mind impairment and its relationship with clinical symptoms and neurocognition in patients with schizophrenia

“…Therefore, stronger relationships between cognitive ToM and positive symptoms, as well as between affective ToM and negative symptoms is to be expected. However, there are studies that have found the opposite relationship; for example, Kim et al [ 25 ] performed a Pearson correlation analysis between ToM and clinical symptoms in 25 patients experiencing first-episode psychosis and found that affective ToM was associated with positive symptoms but not with negative symptoms; it is possible that this may be related to the greater severity of positive symptoms observed during early psychosis and the heterogeneity of the ToM paradigm employed. In fact, some other studies have not found such a relationship [ 9 , 20 ], reporting that ToM impairment in patients with SCZ has nothing to do with the severity of symptoms and that such defects are more likely to be a trait phenomenon rather than a state phenomenon, meaning that ToM impairment appears to be stable in those with SCZ and its high-risk groups and does not change as the symptoms do.…”