Does contextual information cue comprehension of speaker intent in schizophrenia?

Abstract

Many studies have reported that patients with schizophrenia (SZ) can be impaired in social cognition (Champagne-Lavau et al, 2006) implying communication disorders and theory of mind (ToM) deficits. Studies (Hardy-Bayle et al., 2003; Sarfati et al., 1999) suggested that patients’ apparent inability to attribute intention to others results from their inability to use contextual information to decode other people's intentions.The aim of this study is to determine 1) whether contextual information such as level of incongruity cue speaker intent in SZ patients, 2) and whether symptomatology and/or cognitive deficits are associated to a deficit in attributing intentions to others.Thirty patients with schizophrenia and thirty matched healthy participants - all right handed and native French speakers - were tested individually on a standard ToM task (Sarfati et al., 1997), on their executive functions (inhibition, flexibility, fluency) and on their irony understanding involving attribution and comprehension of speaker intent. Psychological researches (Ivanko & Pexman, 2003) have demonstrated that several factors such as the degree of incongruity between context and speaker utterance influence the extent to which ironic intent is perceived. Therefore, context is manipulated according to length of this incongruity.Main results showed that SZ patients seem sensitive to contextual change since they made more errors in weakly negative context than in strongly negative one. However, contrary to healthy participants, they tend to interpret ironic utterances as errors or lies, attributing a wrong intention to the speaker. These difficulties seemed to be associated with a specific lack of flexibility.