BackgroundThe purpose of this article was to conduct a review of the types of training offered to people with schizophrenia in order to help them develop strategies to cope with or compensate for neurocognitive or sociocognitive deficits.MethodsWe conducted a search of the literature using keywords such as “schizophrenia”, “training”, and “cognition” with the most popular databases of peer-reviewed journals.ResultsWe reviewed 99 controlled studies in total (though nine did not have a control condition). We found that drill and practice training is used more often to retrain neurocognitive deficits while drill and strategy training is used more frequently in the context of sociocognitive remediation.ConclusionsHypotheses are suggested to better understand those results and future research is recommended to compare drill and strategy with drill and practice training for both social and neurocognitive deficits in schizophrenia.
Social anxiety is highly prevalent in individuals with schizophrenia, with studies suggesting rates of 30%. This study aimed at determining if social anxiety is linked to specific emotion recognition deficits and to specific social functioning deficits. A total of 47 participants with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and receiving outpatient services answered measures of facial recognition (Ekman; Facial Emotion Identification Test), facial discrimination (Facial Emotion Discrimination Test), role-play, social anxiety (Social Interaction Anxiety Scale and Brief Social Phobia Scale), psychiatric symptoms (Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale), self-esteem (Self-Esteem Rating Scale–Short Form), and social functioning (Social Functioning Scale). A total of 22 (47%) participants were rated as socially anxious. Those with social anxiety had worse social functioning in the domains of interpersonal communication (t[45] = 2.28, p = 0.025) and engagement (in conversations) (t[45] = 2.89, p = 0.000) and had lower self-esteem (t[45] = 4.05, p = 0.001). Participants with social anxiety also had more difficulties in recognizing neutral emotional faces (t[31] = 2.19, p = 0.036). More studies are warranted to better understand the link between neutral expression recognition and social anxiety in schizophrenia.
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