Predictors of social cognition in patients with schizophrenia

Daniela Mirabilio¹, Silvia Di Tommaso¹, Ilaria Riccardi¹, Massimo Marinelli¹, Enrico Daneluzzo², Paolo Stratta³, Luigi D’Albenzio¹, Alessandro Rossi²

¹Unità Operativa di Psicologia Clinica a Villa Serena – Città S.Angelo (PE) Italy; ²Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale-Università de L’Aquila, Italy; ³Dipartimento di Salute Mentale ASL L’Aquila, Italy

Abstract: The goal of this study is to explore neurocognitive, clinical and community functioning variables in order to predict “social reasoning” in a sample of patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenic disorder. Cognitive and community functioning, and social reasoning have been evaluated, together with the Positive and Negative Syndromes Scale (PANSS) and DSM-IV Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF), in a sample of 46 patients who met the DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia. Our findings show that global functioning as reflected by GAF is the strongest predictor of the social reasoning as evaluated by the Wason’s Selection Task (WST). Other community functioning variables such as the Life Skills Profile (LSP) sub-scores do not provide significant prediction of social reasoning. Similarly, neurocognitive measures, in terms of attention and contextual reasoning, have no predictive effect on social reasoning. Our findings show that social cognition should be considered as an additional cognitive domain more related to functional outcome.

Keywords: social cognition, contextual reasoning, sustained attention, community functioning, social reasoning, schizophrenia