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Introduction. Many studies have reported that individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) may have impaired social cognition, resulting in communication disorders and theory of mind (ToM) impairments. However, the classical tasks used to assess impaired ToM ability are too complex. The aim of this study was to assess ToM ability using both a classical task and a referential communication task that reproduces a ''natural'' conversation situation. Methods. Thirty-one participants with schizophrenia and 29 matched healthy participants were tested individually on a referential communication task and on a standard ToM task. Results and Conclusion. The main results showed that SZ participants had difficulties using reference markers and attributing mental states in both ToM tasks. Contrary to healthy participants, they exhibited a tendency to ineffectively mark the information they used (indefinite articles for old information and/or definite articles for new information) and had problems using information they shared with the experimenter.

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Many studies have reported that patients with schizophrenia (SZ) can be impaired in social cognition (Champagne-Lavau et al, 2006) implying communication disorders and theory of mind (ToM) deficits. Studies (Hardy-Bayle et al., 2003; Sarfati et al., 1999) suggested that patients’ apparent inability to attribute intention to others results from their inability to use contextual information to decode other people's intentions.The aim of this study is to determine 1) whether contextual information such as level of incongruity cue speaker intent in SZ patients, 2) and whether symptomatology and/or cognitive deficits are associated to a deficit in attributing intentions to others.Thirty patients with schizophrenia and thirty matched healthy participants - all right handed and native French speakers - were tested individually on a standard ToM task (Sarfati et al., 1997), on their executive functions (inhibition, flexibility, fluency) and on their irony understanding involving attribution and comprehension of speaker intent. Psychological researches (Ivanko & Pexman, 2003) have demonstrated that several factors such as the degree of incongruity between context and speaker utterance influence the extent to which ironic intent is perceived. Therefore, context is manipulated according to length of this incongruity.Main results showed that SZ patients seem sensitive to contextual change since they made more errors in weakly negative context than in strongly negative one. However, contrary to healthy participants, they tend to interpret ironic utterances as errors or lies, attributing a wrong intention to the speaker. These difficulties seemed to be associated with a specific lack of flexibility.

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