Soziale Kognition und Schizophrenie

Zusammenfassung

Anliegen Untersucht werden soll die Fähigkeit schizophrener Patienten soziale und emotionale Reize zu integrieren. Methode Schizophrene Patienten und gesunde Kontrollprobanden sollten emotionale Gesichter mit situativen Abbildungen auf deren Stimmigkeit hin vergleichen. Ergebnisse Schizophrene Patienten machen bei der Zuordnung der Bilder signifikant mehr Fehler und zeigen eine längere Reaktionszeit als die gesunde Kontrollgruppe. Schlussfolgerung Schizophrenie geht mit einem bedeutsamen Defizit der Integration emotionaler und sozialer Reize einher, woraus sich für die betroffenen Patienten Probleme bei Prozessen der sozialen Wahrnehmung und Interaktion ergeben können.

Abstract

Objectives A cardinal feature of schizophrenia is the patient's difficulty in interacting appropriately within the social milieu. Patients appear to misinterpret social cues and show difficulties in recognizing different aspects of the social environment. Successful social interaction denotes the decoding of affective information from the facial expression of our counterpart and the evaluation of the affective content of the present situation. The present study investigates the integration of affective and social stimuli in schizophrenic patients. Methods Sixteen healthy controls and 16 schizophrenic patients participated. Affective faces and affective situations were presented simultaneously and the subjects were asked to indicate by button press whether the expression of the face matches or mismatches the emotional content of the situation. Results Schizophrenic patients compared to healthy controls show higher error rates and longer reaction times. Nevertheless the reduced performance was above chance-level. Conclusion These results suggest an impairment of the ability of mind reading or mentalizing in schizophrenic patients. Patients are not able to integrate affective and social information. The impairment of these integration in schizophrenic patients may form the basis of their difficulties to react appropriately in social situations.

Schlüsselwörter

Schizophrenie - Emotionsattribution - Match-mismatch-Paradigma

Key words

schizophrenia - emotion attribution - match-mismatch paradigm