Differences between individuals with schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder and healthy controls in social cognition and mindfulness skills: A controlled study

Abstract

The study of social cognition (SC) has emerged as a key domain of mental health, supporting the notion that poorer performance in SC tasks is linked to psychopathology, although most studies have primarily addressed only schizophrenia (SZ). Some recent studies have also shown deficits of SC in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients; however, little is known about how individuals with OCD may differ on SC performance from individuals with SZ. Moreover, initial research in this field suggests that mindfulness skills may be related to SC abilities such as theory of mind (ToM), emotion processing and empathy. Given the potential benefits of mindfulness for treating OCD and SZ, further efforts are needed to understand the association between mindfulness and SC in these populations. The main objective of this study was to compare samples of patients with SZ and OCD to healthy controls (HCs) on several social cognition (SC) domains and mindfulness measures. In total, 30 outpatients diagnosed with SZ, 31 outpatients diagnosed with OCD and 30 healthy controls were assessed in emotion recognition (the Eyes Test), ToM (the Hinting Task), attributional style (the Ambiguous Intentions and Hostility Questionnaire), empathy (the Interpersonal Reactivity Index) and dispositional mindfulness (the MAAS and the FFMQ). Both clinical groups showed poorer performance in emotion recognition and ToM than the HCs. The OCD and SZ patients did not significantly differ in impairment in SC, but the OCD group had higher scores in attributional style (intentionality and anger bias). With regard to mindfulness, the results found lower levels of acting with awareness for the HCs than for either clinical group and higher non-reactivity to inner experience for the HCs than for the individuals with OCD; the results also yielded significant correlations between SC and mindfulness. In conclusion, these findings revealed that SC abilities were impaired in the SZ and OCD groups compared to the HC group, suggesting a similar disrupted pattern in both clinical groups. Aspects of dispositional mindfulness were differentially associated with SC, which may suggest their potential role in novel transdiagnostic interventions.

Similarities and Differences in Brain Activation Between Patients With Schizophrenia and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

“…The shared changes in brain function in SZ and OCD were consistent with the overlapping cognition deficits. SZ and OCD patients presented with homologous impaired cognition in memory, executive function, goal-directed behavior, response inhibition, source monitoring and social cognition ( 3 – 7 , 32 ). The DLPFC is crucial for working memory and episodic memory processes ( 33 , 34 ).…”

“…In OCD patients, obsessions trigger compulsions and avoidances aimed at neutralizing worries. In addition, SZ and OCD both show cognitive impairment in many domains, including memory, executive function, goal-directed behavior, response inhibition, source-monitoring and social cognition, and SZ has greater deficits than OCD ( 1 , 3 – 7 ). Furthermore, there are increasing epidemiological studies showing the relationships between the two disorders.…”

Psychological Dimensions Relevant to Motivation and Pleasure in Schizophrenia

“…There is a paucity of basic research on dispositional mindfulness in schizophrenia ( Martins et al, 2017 ), despite the increasing use of mindfulness-based interventions for treating people with psychotic disorders (meta-analysis by Jansen et al, 2020 ). A foundational study by Tabak et al (2015) found that people with schizophrenia reported lower levels of self-reported mindfulness relative to unaffected comparison participants (although others did not observe these group differences; López-Del-Hoyo et al, 2019 ). Less dispositional mindfulness correlates with worse overall symptom severity in people with schizophrenia ( Hochheiser et al, 2020 ), including greater clinician-rated amotivation ( Lee and Yu, 2021 ).…”

Pessimistic Attribution Style and other Attribution Styles in Anxiety Disorders: A Systematic Review

“…López-Del-Hoyo et al (2019) compared schizophrenia and OCD patients on social cognitive measures, the results showed significant differences only for attributional style (intentionality bias and anger bias) with higher scores in the OCD group. 45 In respect to self-serving bias, in another study, OCD patient did not differ from healthy controls and paranoid or non-paranoid clinical groups; OCD patients also made comparable degree of internal attribution for both positive and negative outcomes with other groups. 47 A meta-analysis 36 indicates that cognitive vulnerabilities which were developed in the context of depression may not be unique to depression, rather high comorbidity and lack of symptom specificity between anxiety and depression indicates involvement of these vulnerabilities in anxiety disorders as well.…”

“…Fourteen (73.68%) of the studies [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55] were cross-sectional, four (21.05%) studies [56][57][58][59] were therapeutic interventions and one study 35 (5.26%) was meta-analysis in nature. Range of sample size for cross-sectional studies was 41-214 and for intervention was 24…”