Heterogeneity of social cognitive performance in autism and schizophrenia

Abstract

Autistic adults and those with schizophrenia (SCZ) demonstrate similar levels of reduced social cognitive performance at the group level, but it is unclear whether these patterns are relatively consistent or highly variable within and between the two conditions. Seventy-two adults with SCZ (52 male, M age = 28.2 years) and 94 with diagnoses on the autism spectrum (83 male, M age = 24.2 years) without intellectual disability completed a comprehensive social cognitive battery. Latent profile analysis identified four homogeneous subgroups that were compared on their diagnosis, independent living skills, neurocognition, and symptomatology. Two groups showed normative performance across most social cognitive tasks but were differentiated by one having significantly higher hostility and blaming biases. Autistic participants were more likely to demonstrate fully normative performance (46.8%) than participants with SCZ, whereas normative performance in SCZ was more likely to co-occur with increased hostility and blaming biases (36.1%). Approximately 43% of participants in the full sample were classified into the remaining two groups showing low or very low performance. These participants tended to perform worse on neurocognitive tests and have lower IQ and fewer independent living skills. The prevalence of low performance on social cognitive tasks was comparable across clinical groups. However, nearly half of autistic participants demonstrated normative social cognitive performance, challenging assumptions that reduced social cognitive performance is inherent to the condition. Subgrouping also revealed a meaningful distinction between the clinical groups: participants with SCZ were more likely to demonstrate hostility biases than autistic participants, even when social cognitive performance was otherwise in the typical range. Lay SummarySocial cognition refers to the perception and interpretation of social information. Previous research has shown that both autistic people and those with schizophrenia demonstrate reduced performance on traditional social cognitive tasks, which we replicate here at the group level. However, we also found that almost half of autistic participants performed in the normal range. Over a third of participants with schizophrenia did as well, but for them this performance was accompanied by a hostility bias not commonly found in the autistic sample. Taken together, findings challenge assumptions that difficulties in social cognition are a uniform characteristic of these clinical conditions in those without intellectual disability.

Autistic symptoms in unaffected first-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia: results from the Italian Network for Research on Psychoses multicenter study

“…In participants with more severe autistic symptoms, a worse cognitive performance was observed, both in the Global Cognition composite index and in Working Memory and Social Cognition domains. This finding is line with those observed in people with SSD and confirms the relationship between autistic symptoms and worse cognitive performance, which is particularly important regarding social cognition abilities [8,9,28,78,79].…”

Loneliness is associated with mentalizing and emotion recognition abilities in schizophrenia, but only in a cluster of patients with social cognitive deficits

“…At the same time, several recent studies which have utilized clustering methods, observed similar rates of patients without marked social cognitive impairments (e.g. ∼ 65%, Hajdúk et al, 2018; 56%, Hajdúk et al, 2022) as the current study (56%). It is also worth noting that overlap between some of the tasks included in the SCOPE battery and constructs that they measure can be discussed.…”

Neural circuit disruptions of eye gaze processing in autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis

“…Prior meta-analyses have also combined across broader social perception tasks encompassing both lower-and higher-order social cognitive processes. While future studies directly comparing the neural correlates of eye gaze dysfunction in ASD and schizophrenia using homogenous paradigms can be helpful, meta-analyses integrating a range of paradigms-re ecting task heterogeneity common across imaging research groups as well as samples-can also help advance development of biomarkers with potential generalization to heterogenous ASD and schizophrenia samples (e.g., in terms of complex neurocognitive traits and social cognitive performance) and/or identi cation of distinct subgroups 114 . It is important to note that the few number of eye gaze processing fMRI studies beyond ASD and schizophrenia also hindered inclusion of other disorders in this meta-analysis.…”