Social cognition in schizophrenia: factor structure, clinical and functional correlates

Abstract

Background Social cognition is consistently impaired in people with schizophrenia, separable from general neurocognition, predictive of real-world functioning, and amenable to psychosocial treatment. Few studies have empirically examined its underlying factor structure. Aims The present study (1) examines the factor structure of social cognition in both a sample of individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and non-clinical controls, and (2) explores relationships of factors to neurocognition, symptoms and functioning. Method A factor analysis was conducted on social cognition measures in a sample of sixty-five individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, and fifty control participants. The resulting factors were examined for their relationships to symptoms and functioning. Results Results suggested a two-factor structure in the schizophrenia sample (social cognition skill and hostile attributional style) and a three-factor structure in the non-clinical sample (hostile attributional style, higher-level inferential processing, and lower-level cue detection). In the schizophrenia sample, the social cognition skill factor was significantly related to negative symptoms and social functioning, while hostile attributional style predicted positive and general psychopathology symptoms. Conclusions The factor structure of social cognition in schizophrenia separates hostile attributional style and social cognition skill, and each show differential relationships to relevant clinical variables in schizophrenia.

Social cognition in schizophrenia: Factor structure of emotion processing and theory of mind

“…performance indexed as correct or incorrect) and social cognitive biases (e.g. attributional style) and thus would suggest that the measures utilized in the current study would comprise a skill-based domain (Buck et al, 2016, Mancuso et al, 2011; Van Hooren et al, 2008). For these reasons, we conducted a series of confirmatory factor analyses (e.g., Raykov and Marcoulides, 2006) based on this unidimensionality model.…”

“…In addition, the factor structure of social cognition in schizophrenia has yielded two-factor (Buck et al, 2016; Ziv et al, 2011), three-factor (Mancuso et al, 2011; Mehta et al, 2014), and four-factor solutions (Bell et al, 2009). Due to the differing conceptualizations of social cognition and a wide array of measures with unknown psychometric properties utilized in previous work, the genuine factor structure remains unknown.…”

Schizophrenia and Social Cognition: A Review of Concepts and Treatment Options

“…Emotion can also be transmitted via speech by using rhythm, or prosody, and some studies have demonstrated that schizophrenic patients also have difficulty recognizing vocal emotions [23,29]. When listening to sentences read with emotional intonation and without it, schizophrenic patients could not make a correct distinction, as healthy subjects did without problem [2,27].…”

“…Negative psychotic symptoms and social interaction anxiety reduce social functioning, which becomes worse as the psychosis gets more severe [14,21,23]. It is still unclear if people at high risk for schizophrenia have early social cognitive impairment, but they should be closely followed to detect any sign of psychosis [24,25].…”

“…It has been suggested that conceptual disorganization moderates relationships between cognitive processes, especially the control of neurocognition over social cognition [12,34]. As such, conceptual disorganization has recently become a topic of research as a possible treatment target, aiming to improve social impairment in schizophrenics [23,34].…”