Preserved implicit mentalizing in schizophrenia despite poor explicit performance: evidence from eye tracking

Abstract

Schizophrenia has been characterized by an impaired mentalizing. It has been suggested that distinguishing implicit from explicit processes is crucial in social cognition, and only the latter might be affected in schizophrenia. Two other questions remain open: (1) Is schizophrenia characterized by an hypo- or hyper attribution of intentions? (2) Is it characterized by a deficit in the attribution of intention or of contingency? To test these three questions, spontaneous mentalizing was tested in 29 individuals with schizophrenia and 29 control subjects using the Frith-Happé animations, while eye movements were recorded. Explicit mentalizing was measured from participants’ verbal descriptions and was contrasted with implicit mentalizing measured through eye tracking. As a group, patients made less accurate and less intentional descriptions of the goal-directed and theory of mind animations. No group differences were found in the attribution of contingency. Eye tracking results revealed that patients and controls showed a similar modulation of eye movements in response to the mental states displayed in the Frith-Happé animations. To conclude, in this paradigm, participants with schizophrenia showed a dissociation between explicit and implicit mentalizing, with a decrease in the explicit attribution of intentions, whereas their eye movements suggested a preserved implicit perception of intentions.

Implicit Mentalizing in Patients With Schizophrenia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…They used different paradigms. Except for one study (Roux et al, 2016b), all described different eye movements in patients with schizophrenia compared to controls (Roux et al, 2014(Roux et al, , 2015(Roux et al, , 2016aPatel et al, 2020). Three studies described reduced viewing time on the face (Roux et al, 2014(Roux et al, , 2016aPatel et al, 2020), one described that patients spent more time observing contextual cues, which also highlighted the importance of time, based on which patients' mentalizing is delayed (Roux et al, 2016a).…”

“…Three (Roux et al, 2014(Roux et al, , 2016bPatel et al, 2020) studies measured the mean fixation duration which refers to the processing of information. Two studies found increased mean fixation duration in patients, which may indicate less saccades, shorter scanning paths (Roux et al, 2014(Roux et al, , 2016b.…”

Persons With Schizophrenia Misread Hemingway: A New Approach to Study Theory of Mind in Schizophrenia

“…Relatively few studies focused on implicit and spontaneous ToM. Roux et al found (21) preserved implicit mental-state attribution measured by eye-tracking, whereas explicit performance was impaired, however, they also detected slowdown of social context processing during intention attribution with a similar paradigm (22). Other investigations-which used animated geometric forms stimuli-found deficient spontaneous ToM skills characterized with incorrect social inferences in schizophrenia (8,10,11,23).…”

À propos de la modélisation cognitive de la schizophrénie : « De Frith à nos jours, actualisations ou nouveaux paradigmes ? ». Une revue de littérature systématique.

“…Ils semblent avoir pour intention une mise à jour de la caractérisation des endophénotypes schizophréniques et surtout la manière dont sont menées les expériences avec l'ajout de ces notions. Nous retrouvons d'ailleurs ces notions de manière significative dans notre littérature dans des articles à partir de 2016 (54,96,200,201).…”