The purpose of this paper is to validate experimentally the hypothesis that postulates a distorted attribution of mental states to others in schizophrenics. Twelve subjects with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were compared with a normal and a clinical control group. Subjects were asked to read a comic strip (with no verbal material) and to choose one of the two answer cards which seemed the most logical to complete the sequence based on the supposed mental state of the character. The results of this study confirm the principal hypothesis that schizophrenics with thought and language disorders have an impaired ability to attribute intentions and false beliefs as they figure in this experiment. Although the theory of mind deficit was specific to schizophrenia for the attribution of false beliefs, no difference was found between the schizophrenic group and the depressed group for the attribution of intentions. Schizophrenics' choice is based specifically on a socially familiar experience rather than the context of the story.
These preliminary data show that fluoxetine and norfluoxetine might influence 5-HT peripheral venous blood parameters and that plasma 5-HT after 1 day of treatment might be a biological predictor for antidepressant response.
This finding provides evidence for the cognitive heterogeneity of schizophrenic subjects. This absence of priming effect in thought-disordered schizophrenic subjects supports the hypothesis that these patients present a deficit in the post-lexical controlled information processing that permits the integration of semantic information.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.