Humour experience in schizophrenia: relationship with executive dysfunction and psychosocial impairment

Abstract

Compared with controls, patients with schizophrenia were less sensitive at detecting humour but similarly able to appreciate humour. The degree of humour recognition difficulty may be associated with the extent of executive dysfunction and thus contribute to the psychosocial impairment in patients with schizophrenia.

From Ice Age to Madagascar: Appreciation of slapstick humor in children with Asperger's syndrome

“…Nonetheless, the study tested participants aged 19 to 50 years were tested, which may explain this discrepancy. Impaired ability to discriminate between humorous and non-humorous stimuli was also observed in schizophrenia patients, in whom the degree of discrimination difficulties seemed to be related to the extent of executive dysfunction (Tsoi et al 2008). The degree of executive dysfunction was also negatively correlated with comprehension of humor (performance in humor tests such as the Joke Completion Test) in a sample of otherwise healthy elderly people (Shammi and Stuss 2003).…”

“…While several emotional response systems are usually in coherence in healthy individuals (e.g., Levenson 1992), a dissociation between self-reported and facial expression of emotion was found in psychopathological conditions involving executive dysfunction, such as schizophrenia (Berenbaum and Oltmanns 1992;Kring and Neale 1996), which is relevant because schizophrenia is associated with similar impairments in social cognition and social functioning as autism (Craig et al 2004;Pinkham et al 2008). Schizophrenia patients also showed dissociation between the ability to detect humor (the ability to discriminate between humorous and non-humorous stimuli) and the appreciation of humorous material (Tsoi et al 2008). The coordinated engagement of the experiential and behavioral components of emotional responses is important for emotion-based social interactions (Keltner and Kring 1998).…”

Letter to the Editor: A reply to Dr Corcoran

“…I am grateful for the opportunity to continue the discussion about the use of humorous material in psychological studies of people with mental health difficulties. As stated in my original commentary on Tsoi et al (2008), my intention is to encourage highquality research exploring humour appreciation difficulties in chronic mental health conditions. It is for this reason that I accepted the invitation both to comment on the original article (Tsoi et al 2008) and to present a rejoinder to Lee et al's above Letter.…”

“…As stated in my original commentary on Tsoi et al (2008), my intention is to encourage highquality research exploring humour appreciation difficulties in chronic mental health conditions. It is for this reason that I accepted the invitation both to comment on the original article (Tsoi et al 2008) and to present a rejoinder to Lee et al's above Letter. As I am not interested in academic sparring I will not dwell long on the points raised by Lee et al Instead I will limit this rejoinder to two main themes that may be most fruitfully considered by would-be researchers in this field.…”

“…The value of all scientific study is determined by the questions we choose to address, the methods we choose to address those questions and the manner in which we interpret the data and the statistical findings. Tsoi et al (2008) asked good questions, the answers to which will improve our understanding of the clinical picture of psychosis. One of the foci in my commentary was on the methods chosen by Tsoi et al in particular their choice of stimuli.…”