The relationship between jumping to conclusions and social cognition in first-episode psychosis

Abstract

Jumping to conclusions (JTC) and impaired social cognition (SC) affect the decoding, processing, and use of social information by people with psychosis. However, the relationship between them had not been deeply explored within psychosis in general, and in first-episode psychosis (FEP) in particular. Our aim was to study the relationship between JTC and SC in a sample with FEP. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 121 patients with FEP, with measures to assess JTC (easy, hard, and salient probability tasks) and SC (emotional recognition, attributional style, and theory of mind). We performed Student’s t-test and logistic regression in order to analyse these associations.We found a statistically significant and consistent relationship of small-moderate effect size between JTC (all three tasks) and impaired emotional recognition. Also, our results suggest a relationship between JTC and internal attributions for negative events. Relationships between JTC and theory of mind were not found. These results highlight the importance of psychological treatments oriented to work on a hasty reasoning style and on improving processing of social information linked to emotional recognition and single-cause attributions.

The Journey Within: Mental Navigation as a Novel Framework for Understanding Psychotherapeutic Transformation

“…There are This paper is published in BMC Psychiatry You can find it by following this link: https://bit.ly/3Ow5tO7 Please cite the published version several papers discussing the role of JTC in the development of psychosis [e.g., [78][79][80] or schizophrenia [e.g., 81]. Additionally, JTC contributes to impaired emotional recognition and the tendency to make internal attributions for negative events [82]. This implies that clients, guided by an underlying maladaptive belief system, often come to negative conclusions without an attempt to search for a more constructive path.…”

Cognitive Biases and Socio-Occupational Functioning Mediate the Relationship between Executive Functions and the Severity of Psychopathology among Young Adults with Psychotic-like Experiences: 1-Year Follow-Up Study

“…Such cognitive biases are associated with the schizophrenia spectrum [ 49 , 50 ] and often manifest as jumping to conclusions (making judgments without a sufficient amount of information) and belief inflexibility, external attribution bias, or paying attention to threats (excessive perception of others’ behavior as threatening) [ 51 ]. They could be also social cognition problems [ 52 ]…”

“…Such cognitive biases are associated with the schizophrenia spectrum [49,50] and often manifest as jumping to conclusions (making judgments without a sufficient amount of information) and belief inflexibility, external attribution bias, or paying attention to threats (excessive perception of others' behavior as threatening) [51]. They could be also social cognition problems [52] Many studies have confirmed that exaggerated cognitive biases are observed along the continuum of psychosis from psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) to full-blown psychosis [50]. In addition, besides being one of the characteristics of psychosis, cognitive biases play an important role in the appearance of psychotic symptoms, e.g., hallucinations and delusions-even among healthy individuals [53,54].…”

Heterogeneity in Response to MCT and Psychoeducation: A Feasibility Study Using Latent Class Mixed Models in First-Episode Psychosis

“…MCT includes sessions that work on domains of social cognition such as facial emotion recognition and theory of mind, both of which are strong predictors of outcome [ 12 ]. Likewise, it targets the jumping-to-conclusions bias (JTC), which has been repeatedly associated with delusions, poorer neurocognition, and measures of outcome [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ].…”