Metacognition as a mediator of the effects of impairments in neurocognition on social function in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

Abstract

Results suggest that certain forms of metacognition mediate the influence of neurocognition upon function in schizophrenia.

Trauma, Dissociation and Synthetic Metacognition in Schizophrenia

“…Metacognitive mastery, in other words an ability to use knowledge about oneself, other people, and context of a situation to cope with mental health problems, has close relationship with intrinstic motivation in schizophrenia and both qualities predict learning ability (Tas et al, 2012). Metacognitive mastery shows a similar connection also in relation to functional competence (Lysaker et al, 2011b;Lysaker et al, 2011d) and moderates influence of neurocognitive deficits on social functions (Lysaker et al, 2010c). A similar finding is that better self-reflection prospectively predicts keeping a job position in schizophrenic patients (Lysaker et al, 2010a).…”

Alexithymia and Irony Comprehension and their Relations with Depression, Anxiety, General Symptomatology and Personality Disorders: A Comparison Between Clinical and Non-Clinical Participants

“…On the other hand, it is possible that appreciation of irony is not related to symptoms in PD as this can represent too subtle a mentalistic impairment to make persons vulnerable, for example, to obsessions or somatizations. Chances are that the negative impact of both dysfunctions of the metacognitive system is higher in the domains of interpersonal functioning and social adaptation (Brüne, Abdel-Hamid, Lehmkämper, & Sonntag, 2007;Lysaker, Shea, Buck, Dimaggio, Nicolò, Procacci et al, in press b), thus we plan to include measures of interpersonal functioning in next studies.…”

From social neurons to social cognition: implications for schizophrenia research / Sosyal nöronlardan sosyal kognisyona: Şizofreni araştırmalarına etkileri

“…Research in the past two decades or so has revealed that poor social functioning is, at least to a considerable extent, caused by deficits in social cognition (3). Among several subdomains of social cognition, metacognition, the ability to represent own and others' mental states and to use this knowledge to cope with social problems (5,6), has been identified as a mediator of neurocognitive functioning and social skills in schizophrenia patients (10,11). Metacognition, which in a broader definition includes judgements about complex mental states such as empathetic feelings, fairness perception, moral norms and values, including shame and guilt (83)(84)(85)(86)(87), is profoundly impaired in schizophrenia (6,7,8), and two recent studies discovered that this failure includes the appreciation of moral values such as fairness (98,99).…”

“…Social cognition embraces different domains such as social perception, social knowledge, emotion recognition, and the ability to represent mental states of self and others. This latter aspect of social cognition, termed "metacognition", includes the ability to use mentalistic information for effective social problem-solving (4,5), and this particular capacity seems to be frequently impaired in schizophrenia (reviewed in [6][7][8][9][10]. The concept of metacognition broadly overlaps with those of "theory of mind" (11), "metarepresentation" (12), "mentalizing" (13), "mental state attribution" (14), and "cognitive and affective empathy" (15).…”