Attribution of Mental States to Others by Schizophrenic Patients

Abstract

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.

Exploratory study of the association between insight and Theory of Mind (ToM) in stable schizophrenia patients

“…In addition, deficits were only observed on particularly complex tasks using irony or the understanding of indirect speech, but not on first and second order false belief recognition or metaphor mentalizing tasks. By contrast, studies approaching mentalizing abilities using non-verbal comic strips, picture sequencing or visual methodologies have not found differences between non-specific heterogeneous patient groups or subjects at risk and controls Kelemen et al, 2004), or did so only in relation to patients with particular symptom clusters (Sarfati et al, 1997a, or in relation to particular mental states (Sarfati et al, 1997b), thus supporting the state-dependent view.…”

“…In relation to disorganization symptoms, the lack of significant association with ToM was surprising (see Sarfati et al, 1997aSarfati et al, ,b, 1999Sarfati and HardyBaylé, 1999). This may be explained by the scarcity of disorganised symptoms in our sample.…”

“…Disorganization symptoms have also been related to ToM impairment. The nature of this relationship has proved to be temporal or state dependent, and is modulated by executive function, inability to extract relevant information from the context (Sarfati et al, 1997a(Sarfati et al, , b, 1999Brüne, 2005b) and simply verbal intelligence .…”

Exploratory Study of the Association Between Insight and Theory of Mind (Tom) in Stable Schizophrenia Patients

“…Disorganization symptoms have also been related to ToM impairment. The nature of this relationship has proved to be temporal or state dependent, and is modulated by executive function, inability to extract relevant information from the context (Sarfati et al, 1997a(Sarfati et al, , b, 1999Brüne, 2005b) and simply verbal intelligence .…”

Deficit of social cognition in schizophrenia: research and perspectives

“…В числе разрабатываемых и перспективных направлений -психологические исследования бредовых убеждений [21]. Возникший первоначально в психоаналитической психиатрии, интерес к защитной функции проекции, порождающей персекуторные убеждения для защиты хрупкого и уязвимого чувства собственного достоинства больного, развивается и за пределами психоанализа.…”