The Relationships between Social Cognition,Symptoms and Social Functioning in Patients with Schizophrenia

• Main Authors: LIN,YI-AN, 林易安
• Other Authors: YEH,ZAI-TING
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/55075333602044226494

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 臨床心理學系碩士班 === 104 === Research background: Individuals with schizophrenia have impaired social cognition abilities. Previous research indicated that deficits in social cognition may lead to impaired social functioning, which not only had an effect on the quality of life, interpersonal relationship and occupational functioning, but also caused the recurrence of schizophrenia and poor prognosis. In recent years, research on social cognition in schizophrenia focused on Theory of Mind and emotional perception. Research indicated that their performance in these areas is related to symptoms, some studies even pointed out that Theory of Mind deficits would result in the occurrence of symptoms, and the symptoms can also lead to poor social functioning. As a result, the first goal of this study is to test whether the influence of social cognition ability on social functioning is mediated through symptoms, and whether there is significant prediction of emotional perception and symptoms to social functioning. Moreover, previous studies of emotional perception showed no consistent conclusions about which type of emotion perception deficit did schizophrenia patient have. The possible reasons is that these studies only analyzed the wrong type of emotional identification, they did not analyze whether specific emotions were misjudged as other emotions. Schizophrenia patient may have difficulty in distinguish between their own emotions with others due to empathy deficient. Therefore, the second goal of this study is to analyze whether there is a tendency to misjudge specific emotion in schizophrenia, and whether these misjudgments are associated with their own emotional state. Method: We use faux pas task, advanced Theory of Mind task and nonverbal Theory of Mind task to evaluate Theory of Mind ability, and we use the Florida Affect Battery assessment to evaluate emotion perception ability on 30 schizophrenia patient and healthy control. In the patient group, we also use PANSS and Social functioning scale for mental illness to evaluate symptoms and social functioning. Result: The result showed that the influence of Theory of Mind ability on social functioning is mediated through negative symptoms. There is a significant positive correlation of either depression or emotional withdrawal with misjudgments of sad; there is a significant positive correlation of either anger or hostility with misjudgments of angry. Conclusions: Our result indicated that future clinical intervention of schizophrenia may focus on treatment in negative feature. For example, to enhance motivation, behavior activation and reduce negative expectation of pleasure and failure. In addition, social cognition training of Theory of Mind, perceptive taking, emotional discrimination of their own and others may help improving social functioning.