Assessing Social-Cognitive Deficits in Schizophrenia With the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test

Abstract

The emotion management subscale of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) has recently been recommended by the National Institute of Mental Health Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia committee as the sole measure of social cognition for trials of cognitive enhancement in schizophrenia, yet the psychometric properties of this subscale and the larger instrument in schizophrenia patients have not been thoroughly examined. This research presents a psychometric investigation of the MSCEIT in a sample of 64 early course outpatients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective, or schizophreniform disorder. Results demonstrated that the MSCEIT possesses adequate internal consistency reliability among its branch and total scales and that patients' branch and overall test performance was significantly below normative levels. Estimates of discriminant and concurrent validity indicated that the MSCEIT diverged from measures of neurocognitive functioning and psychopathology, but was only modestly related with objective measures of functional outcome. Convergent validity estimates suggested that, contrary to expectations, the MSCEIT did not correlate with a behavioral measure of social cognition. Finally, exploratory factor analyses suggested the possibility of a shift in the latent structure of emotional intelligence in schizophrenia, compared with studies with healthy individuals. These findings support the use of the MSCEIT as a reliable and potentially valid method of assessing the emotional components of social cognition in schizophrenia, but also point to a need for additional measurement development efforts to assess broader social-cognitive domains that may exhibit stronger relations with functional outcome. Further investigation is warranted to examine the instrument's latent factor structure and convergence with other measures of social cognition.

190. Social Cognition in Early Schizophrenia: Exploratory Factor Analysis and Subcortical Biomarkers

“…Interestingly, previous EFA studies in the SC domain of schizophrenia patients have found similar SC derived factors that we did (Eack, Greeno, et al, 2010;P. H. Lysaker et al, 2013;Ziv et al, 2011).…”

The Social Cognition Psychometric Evaluation Study: Results of the Expert Survey and RAND Panel

“…Table 2 provides a list of the selected measures along with citation information and number of nominations. Of note, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) 51 received 8 nominations; however, because the basic psychometric properties of the MSCEIT have already been established, 52,53 it was not considered for inclusion in this portion of the project.…”

Role of Visual Integration in Gaze Perception and Emotional Intelligence in Schizophrenia

“…3 Emotional intelligence captures broader socioemotional functioning ranging from facial emotion perception to higher level processes including understanding, inferring, and effectively regulating emotional states, 25 and SCZ participants have shown consistent deficits in emotional intelligence. 3,26,27 In addition, a recent neuroimaging study showed that poorer emotional intelligence in SCZ was associated with abnormal functional coupling of the visual cortex with anterior cingulate cortex during a social appraisal task. 28 Although early visual processing was not directly assessed in this study, it provides evidence for an important connection between basic visual processing and higher level social functioning in the disorder, calling for further investigations.…”

“…29 For social cognition, gaze perception and emotional intelligence were selected to represent a range of levels of socioemotional information processing with documented relevance to SCZ. 1,3,26,27 We hypothesized that (1) SCZ participants would show poorer visual integration than HC; (2) visual integration would be associated with social cognition (including gaze perception and emotional intelligence) in SCZ; and (3) variances in the social cognitive measures due to visual integration would be comparable to and overlap with those due to diagnosis group.…”