What gets in the way of social engagement in schizophrenia?

Weittenhiller, Lauren P.; Mikhail, Megan E.; Mote, Jasmine; Campellone, Timothy R.; Kring, Ann M.

doi:10.5498/wjp.v11.i1.13

Cited by 20 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Furthermore, social connection is a motivationally salient reward in and of itself ( Baumeister and Leary, 1995 ). People with schizophrenia share a desire for social connection that is similar to those without the illness; they report similar levels of social interest ( Trémeau et al, 2013 ) and are motivated by the same aspects of social connection ( Weittenhiller et al, 2021 ). However, people with schizophrenia set fewer social goals in their daily lives ( Gard et al, 2014 ) and report spending more time alone ( Kasanova et al, 2018 ).…”

Section: Psychological Dimensions Relevant To Amotivation and Anhedoniamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People with a higher social reward sensitivity prioritize the presence of relationship growth over security when defining relationship success ( Gable and Poore, 2008 ; Cortes et al, 2018 ). Though recent work has identified that people with schizophrenia are more motivated by the affiliative aspects of social connection than by instrumental benefits or a sense of obligation ( Weittenhiller et al, 2021 ), it is unclear to what degree this affiliative motivation stems from a desire to gain social incentives (e.g., companionship, support), rather than a desire to avoid social punishments (e.g., loneliness, rejection). It is possible that people with schizophrenia with social motivation difficulties undervalue social incentives.…”

Section: Psychological Dimensions Relevant To Amotivation and Anhedoniamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Psychological Dimensions Relevant to Motivation and Pleasure in Schizophrenia

Abram

Weittenhiller

Bertrand

et al. 2022

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Motivation and pleasure deficits are common in schizophrenia, strongly linked with poorer functioning, and may reflect underlying alterations in brain functions governing reward processing and goal pursuit. While there is extensive research examining cognitive and reward mechanisms related to these deficits in schizophrenia, less attention has been paid to psychological characteristics that contribute to resilience against, or risk for, motivation and pleasure impairment. For example, psychological tendencies involving positive future expectancies (e.g., optimism) and effective affect management (e.g., reappraisal, mindfulness) are associated with aspects of reward anticipation and evaluation that optimally guide goal-directed behavior. Conversely, maladaptive thinking patterns (e.g., defeatist performance beliefs, asocial beliefs) and tendencies that amplify negative cognitions (e.g., rumination), may divert cognitive resources away from goal pursuit or reduce willingness to exert effort. Additionally, aspects of sociality, including the propensity to experience social connection as positive reinforcement may be particularly relevant for pursuing social goals. In the current review, we discuss the roles of several psychological characteristics with respect to motivation and pleasure in schizophrenia. We argue that individual variation in these psychological dimensions is relevant to the study of motivation and reward processing in schizophrenia, including interactions between these psychological dimensions and more well-characterized cognitive and reward processing contributors to motivation. We close by emphasizing the value of considering a broad set of modulating factors when studying motivation and pleasure functions in schizophrenia.

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Section: Psychological Dimensions Relevant To Amotivation and Anhedoniamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Psychological Dimensions Relevant To Amotivation and Anhedoniamentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological Dimensions Relevant to Motivation and Pleasure in Schizophrenia

Abram

Weittenhiller

Bertrand

et al. 2022

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Lastly, while significant efforts were made to ensure a realistic social interaction, we lacked measures of functional outcomes and thus cannot conclusively determine whether the observed findings relate to functioning in the community. In addition, aside from abnormalities that transpire during the course of an interaction, other barriers may exist that limit the initiation of social engagement (e.g., few social opportunities and fear of rejection) [60,61]. Future studies may wish to comprehensively investigate how multiple sources of social barriers interact to precipitate social affiliative deficits in schizophrenia.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Effortful Approach to Social Affiliation in Schizophrenia: Preliminary Evidence of Increased Theta and Alpha Connectivity during a Live Social Interaction

Schiffman

et al. 2021

Brain Sciences

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People with schizophrenia often experience a profound lack of motivation for social affiliation—a facet of negative symptoms that detrimentally impairs functioning. However, the mechanisms underlying social affiliative deficits remain poorly understood, particularly under realistic social contexts. Here, we investigated subjective reports and electroencephalography (EEG) functional connectivity in schizophrenia during a live social interaction. Individuals with schizophrenia (n = 16) and healthy controls (n = 29) completed a face-to-face interaction with a confederate while having EEG recorded. Participants were randomly assigned to either a Closeness condition designed to elicit feelings of closeness through self-disclosure or a Small-Talk condition with minimal disclosure. Compared to controls, patients reported lower positive emotional experiences and feelings of closeness across conditions, but they showed comparably greater subjective affiliative responses for the Closeness (vs. Small-Talk) condition. Additionally, patients in the Closeness (vs. Small-Talk) condition displayed a global increase in connectivity in theta and alpha frequency bands that was not observed for controls. Importantly, greater theta and alpha connectivity was associated with greater subjective affiliative responding, greater negative symptoms, and lower disorganized symptoms in patients. Collectively, findings indicate that patients, because of pronounced negative symptoms, utilized a less efficient, top-down mediated strategy to process social affiliation.

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“…Intact early "in-the-moment" physiological and experiential responses to emotional stimuli reflect an area of relatively preserved function, which contrasts markedly with the social isolation and community disengagement so commonly seen across psychotic disorders (Green et al, 2018;Green et al, 2020). Further work is needed to understand how these apparently normal initial responses unravel and fail to translate into social engagement and adaptive goal-directed behaviors (Pillny et al, 2020;Weittenhiller et al, 2021). & other #psychosis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intact Differentiation of Responses to Socially-Relevant Emotional Stimuli Across Psychotic Disorders: An Event-Related Potential (ERP) Study

Clayson¹,

Wynn²,

Jimenez³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Event-related potential (ERP) studies of motivated attention in schizophrenia typically show intact sensitivity to affective vs. non-affective images depicting diverse types of content. However, it is not known whether this ERP pattern: 1) extends to images that solely depict social content, (2) applies across a broad sample with diverse psychotic disorders, and (3) relates to self-reported trait social anhedonia. We examined late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes to images involving people that were normatively pleasant (affiliative), unpleasant (threatening), or neutral in 97 stable outpatients with various psychotic disorders and 38 healthy controls. Both groups showed enhanced LPP to pleasant and unpleasant vs. neutral images to a similar degree, despite lower overall LPP in patients. Within the patients, there were no significant LPP differences among subgroups (schizophrenia vs. other psychotic disorders; affective vs. non-affective psychosis) for the valence effect (pleasant/unpleasant vs. neutral). Higher social anhedonia showed a small, significant relation to lower LPP to pleasant images across all groups. These findings suggest intact motivated attention to social images extends across psychotic disorder subgroups. Dimensional transdiagnostic analyses revealed a modest association between self-reported trait social anhedonia and an LPP index of neural sensitivity to pleasant affiliative images.

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What gets in the way of social engagement in schizophrenia?

Cited by 20 publications

References 63 publications

Psychological Dimensions Relevant to Motivation and Pleasure in Schizophrenia

Psychological Dimensions Relevant to Motivation and Pleasure in Schizophrenia

An Effortful Approach to Social Affiliation in Schizophrenia: Preliminary Evidence of Increased Theta and Alpha Connectivity during a Live Social Interaction

Intact Differentiation of Responses to Socially-Relevant Emotional Stimuli Across Psychotic Disorders: An Event-Related Potential (ERP) Study

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