Measurement of social cognitive deficits in schizophrenia

Abstract

This review investigates how to test social cognitive deficits in adults (>18) with schizophrenia based on international recommendations for testing the social cognitive domains of Theory of Mind and emotional processing. Exemplified by the two highly recommended tests Hinting Task and MSCEIT, the aim is to gain further insight into the clinical estimation of social cognitive disabilities in healthy controls. The review thus consists of an examination of published research, as well as test procedures. The findings reveal that healthy controls perform significantly better on the Hinting Task and MSCEIT than people with schizophrenia. However, results also indicate that ceiling effects and cognitively demanding tasks might influence data. Consequently, the importance of paying attention to both the ecological validity and clinical applicability of these tests is accentuated.