Counterfactual Reasoning in Non-psychotic First-Degree Relatives of People with Schizophrenia

Albacete, Auria; Contreras, Fernando Hernández; Bosque, Clara; Gilabert, Ester; Albiach, Ángela; Menchón, José M.; Crespo‐Facorro, Benedicto; Ayesa-Arriola, Rosa

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00665

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 71 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These findings reinforce the hypothesis that schizophrenia is a mental condition in which patients have difficulties in using conditional reasoning to re-imagine a negative outcome in a positive way, a process that enables the activation of alternative representations for dealing with reality. Alongside recent findings among unaffected first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients (Albacete et al, 2016b), the present results also add to our knowledge of cognitive deficits as core features of schizophrenia since these deficits do not seem to be simply the result of symptoms or the pharmacological treatments administered for the illness—i.e., do not seem to share the same underlying pathological process causing the clinical symptoms of the disorder (Gold, 2004; Green et al, 2004). …”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

“…However, it should be noted that the total score of 2/4 found in healthy controls is not consistent with the normative pattern (i.e., a total score of 4/4) originally proposed by Hooker et al (2000). In fact, previous studies by our group also failed to observe a score of 4/4 among controls, with these subjects tending to score 2 or 3 instead (Albacete et al, 2016b; Contreras et al, 2016). Thus, given that the pattern of response differs significantly between studies not only on total score but also for each scenario, further research is required to elucidate the role of CFT in the generation of cognitive inferences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 44%

“…As a result of these studies, a general counterfactual reasoning disruption has been described in schizophrenia, including deficits in these patients' ability to generate counterfactual thoughts, in their causality attributing pattern, and in their ability to make counterfactual-derived inferences (Hooker et al, 2000; Contreras et al, 2016). In addition, and alongside other non-social (Sitskoorn et al, 2004; Snitz et al, 2006) and social (Lavoie et al, 2013; Albacete et al, 2016a) cognitive deficits that are shared by first-degree relatives of psychotic patients, difficulties in the generation of counterfactual thoughts have also been observed among non-psychotic first-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia (Albacete et al, 2016b), suggesting that CFT impairment might be a promising candidate cognitive endophenotype for this disorder.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Symptomatic Remission and Counterfactual Reasoning in Schizophrenia

et al. 2017

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Counterfactual thinking (CFT) is a type of conditional reasoning involving mental representations of alternatives to past factual events that previous preliminary research has suggested to be impaired in schizophrenia. However, despite the potential impact of these deficits on the functional outcome of these patients, studies examining the role of CFT in this disorder are still few in number. The present study aimed to extent previous results by evaluating CFT in the largest sample to date of schizophrenia patients in symptomatic remission and healthy controls. The relationship with symptomatology, illness duration, and sociodemographic characteristics was also explored.Methods: Seventy-eight schizophrenia patients and 84 healthy controls completed a series of tests that examined the generation of counterfactual thoughts, the influence of the “causal order effect,” and the ability to counterfactually derive inferences by using de Counterfactual Inference Test.Results: Compared with controls, patients generated fewer counterfactual thoughts when faced with a simulated scenario. This deficit was negatively related to scores on all dimensions of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale-PANNS, as well as to longer illness duration. The results also showed that schizophrenia patients deviated significantly from the normative pattern when generating inferences from CFT.Conclusions: These findings reveal CFT impairment to be present in schizophrenia even when patients are in symptomatic remission. However, symptomatology and illness duration may have a negative influence on these patients' ability to generate counterfactual thoughts. The results might support the relevance of targeting CFT in future treatment approaches, although further research is needed to better describe the relationship between CFT and both symptomatology and functional outcome.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 44%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Symptomatic Remission and Counterfactual Reasoning in Schizophrenia

et al. 2017

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Furthermore, no influence of age at onset was found on the clinical phenotype, in contrast to what had been reported in literature [39,40,41]. …”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 55%

Epidemiological Study of Huntington's Disease in the Province of Ferrara, Italy

Carrassi

Pugliatti²,

Govoni³

et al. 2017

Neuroepidemiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by the abnormal expansion of CAG triplet repeat. We aimed to reappraise HD epidemiology in a northern Italian population, in relation to introduction of genetic testing. Methods: Through ICD-9M code 333.4 and medical fare exemption code RF0080, HD cases were identified from administrative health data and medical records from the Units of Neurology and Genetics, Ferrara University Hospital, and from other provincial neurological structures. Results: HD mean annual incidence rate in 1990-2009 was 0.3 per 100,000 (95% CI 0.2-0.5). All incident cases were found to have symptoms of the disease's classic form, and neither juvenile nor the rigid Westphal variant was detected. The mean (SD) age at onset was 50.2 (12.7 years; range 32-82 years), 54.9 (14.6) for men and 45.8 (9.4) for women. On prevalence day, December 31, 2014, HD prevalence was 4.2 per 100,000 (95% CI 2.4-7.0), with a male:female ratio of 1:2. Conclusions: The prevalence and incidence of HD in our population were lower than the prevalence and incidence reported for other European and Italian populations, but higher compared to those of Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Compared to previous studies, HD incidence and prevalence did not change significantly.

show abstract

“…Interestingly, the implementation of corrective behaviours (Step 3) appears to be intact in these patients [ 23 ]. With regard to these findings, however, it should be noted that although deficits in CFT activation (Step 1) have been widely reported not only in patients with schizophrenia [ 24 – 26 ] but in their unaffected first-degree relatives [ 27 ], research into the activation of behavioural intentions (Step 2) is still scarce [ 28 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patients with schizophrenia activate behavioural intentions facilitated by counterfactual reasoning

et al. 2017

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous research has associated schizophrenia with an inability to activate behavioural intentions facilitated by counterfactual thinking (CFT) as a step to improving performance. Consequently, these findings suggest that rehabilitation strategies will be entirely ineffective. To extend previous research, we evaluated the influence of CFT in the activation of behavioural intentions using a novel sequential priming paradigm in the largest sample of subjects explored to date.MethodThe main variables assessed were: answer to complete a target task (wrong or correctly), and percentage gain in the reaction time (RT) to complete a target task correctly depending on whether the prime was a counterfactual or a neutral-control cue. These variables were assessed in 37 patients with schizophrenia and 37 healthy controls. Potential associations with clinical status and socio-demographic characteristics were also explored.ResultsWhen a counterfactual prime was presented, the probability of giving an incorrect answer was lower for the entire sample than when a neutral prime was presented (OR 0.58; CI 95% 0.42 to 0.79), but the schizophrenia patients showed a higher probability than the controls of giving an incorrect answer (OR 3.89; CI 95% 2.0 to 7.6). Both the schizophrenia patients and the controls showed a similar percentage gain in RT to a correct answer of 8%.ConclusionsChallenging the results of previous research, our findings suggest a normal activation of behavioural intentions facilitated by CFT in schizophrenia. Nevertheless, the patients showed more difficulty than the controls with the task, adding support to the concept of CFT as a potential new target for consideration in future therapeutic approaches for this illness.

show abstract

Counterfactual Reasoning in Non-psychotic First-Degree Relatives of People with Schizophrenia

Cited by 7 publications

References 71 publications

Symptomatic Remission and Counterfactual Reasoning in Schizophrenia

Symptomatic Remission and Counterfactual Reasoning in Schizophrenia

Epidemiological Study of Huntington's Disease in the Province of Ferrara, Italy

Patients with schizophrenia activate behavioural intentions facilitated by counterfactual reasoning

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About