Social Cognition in Schizophrenia: An NIMH Workshop on Definitions, Assessment, and Research Opportunities

Abstract

Social cognition has become a high priority area for the study of schizophrenia. However, despite developments in this area, progress remains limited by inconsistent terminology and differences in the way social cognition is measured. To address these obstacles, a consensus-building meeting on social cognition in schizophrenia was held at the National Institute of Mental Health in March 2006. Agreement was reached on several points, including definitions of terms, the significance of social cognition for schizophrenia research, and suggestions for future research directions. The importance of translational interdisciplinary research teams was emphasized. The current article presents a summary of these discussions.

Social dysfunction in schizophrenia: An investigation of the GAF scale's sensitivity to deficits in social cognition

“…Social cognition has repeatedly been shown to predict real life social and occupational function, and indeed to mediate the effects of general cognitive function on outcome (Vauth et al, 2004;Brekke et al, 2005;Addington et al, 2006;Green et al, 2008;McGlade et al, 2008;Schmidt et al, 2011). Despite this, our study demonstrates that GAF scores are largely insensitive to variation in social cognition.…”

“…Social cognition -defined as the set of mental operations that underlie social interactions -has emerged in recent years as a key factor in explaining these functional impairments (Fett et al, 2011) both directly, and also by mediating the relationship between neurocognition and functional outcome (Vauth et al, 2004;Brekke et al, 2005;Addington et al, 2006;Green et al, 2008;McGlade et al, 2008;Schmidt et al, 2011). However, whether the current tools for assessing functional impairments in schizophrenia in clinical practice are sensitive enough to measure change in social cognition remains unclear.…”

Audiovisual emotion recognition in schizophrenia: Reduced integration of facial and vocal affect

“…Since the relation between social disabilities and cognitive deficits has been established (Green et al, 2000(Green et al, , 2004Velligan et al, 1997Velligan et al, , 2000, social cognition has become a high priority area in schizophrenia research (Couture et al, 2006;Green et al, 2008). Social cognition refers to 'the mental operations that underlie social interactions, including perceiving, interpreting and generating responses to the intentions, dispositions and behaviors of others' (Green et al, 2008). Besides social cognition, specific disturbances in the automatic, pre-attentive processing of sensory information are thought to be predictors of social outcome (Braff and Light, 2004;Light and Braff, 2005;Swerdlow et al, 2006).…”

PERE: una nueva herramienta para valorar el reconocimiento de las emociones básicas en esquizofrenia

“…mismo como con los demás (Green et al, 2008). La teoría de la mente se defi ne como la capacidad de identifi car los estados mentales de otras personas, como sus pensamientos, creencias e intenciones, y tenerlos en cuenta para explicar y predecir su conducta mientras que el estilo atribucional hace referencia al modo en que las personas explican los acontecimientos positivos y negativos que les suceden (Green et al, 2008).…”

“…La teoría de la mente se defi ne como la capacidad de identifi car los estados mentales de otras personas, como sus pensamientos, creencias e intenciones, y tenerlos en cuenta para explicar y predecir su conducta mientras que el estilo atribucional hace referencia al modo en que las personas explican los acontecimientos positivos y negativos que les suceden (Green et al, 2008). Por último, la percepción social implica la valoración y comprensión de las reglas y roles sociales que se dan en las situaciones sociales, y la capacidad de adecuar el propio comportamiento en función de estos elementos (Green et al, 2008).…”