Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.
Schizophr Bull. 2011 Sep;37(5):1048-56. doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbq012. Epub 2010 Feb 25.
It is well known that individuals with schizophrenia have impaired social cognition. The construct of social cognition involves several components, including perception, interpretation, and the ability to integrate context (Adolphs R. The neurobiology of social cognition. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2001;11:231-239; Brothers L. The social brain: a project for integrating primate behavior and neurophysiology in a new domain. Concepts Neurosci. 1990;1:27-61). Importantly, a number of studies have suggested that deficits in context processing underlie cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia (Penn DL, Corrigan PW, Bentall RP, Racenstein JM, Newman L. Social cognition in schizophrenia. Psychol Bull. 1997;121(1):114-132; Green MF, Nuechterlein KH. Should schizophrenia be treated as a neurocognitive disorder? Schizophr Bull. 1999;25:309-319). Thus, the purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationship between context processing and different aspects of social cognition in schizophrenia.
Individuals with schizophrenia (n = 41) and the healthy controls (n = 32) participated in this study. The participants completed 2 sections of The Awareness of Social Inference Test: (1) social inference minimal (SI-M) and (2) social inference enriched (SI-E). They also completed face and voice emotion discrimination tasks. In addition, we used the AX-Continuous Performance Test (AX-CPT) to measure context processing and the n-back task to measure working memory more generally.
AX-CPT performance in schizophrenia was positively correlated with both SI-M and SI-E performance but not with either the face or the voice discrimination. Furthermore, the correlation between AX-CPT performance and SI-M/SI-E performance was significantly stronger in individuals with schizophrenia than in controls.
These results suggest that impairments in context processing are related to inferential components of social cognition in schizophrenia but not to the ability to recognition facial or vocal emotion. As such, deficits in context processing may contribute to deficits in both "hot" and "cold" aspects of cognition in schizophrenia.
众所周知，精神分裂症患者的社会认知能力受损。社会认知的结构包括感知、解释和整合语境的能力（Adolphs R. 社会认知的神经生物学。当代神经生物学观点。2001;11:231-239; Brothers L. 社会大脑：一个将灵长类动物行为和神经生理学整合到新领域的项目。概念神经科学。1990;1:27-61）。重要的是，许多研究表明，语境处理缺陷是精神分裂症认知功能障碍的基础（Penn DL、Corrigan PW、Bentall RP、Racenstein JM、Newman L. 精神分裂症的社会认知。心理学公报。1997;121(1):114-132; Green MF、Nuechterlein KH. 精神分裂症是否应被视为神经认知障碍？精神分裂症通报。1999;25:309-319）。因此，本研究的目的是探讨精神分裂症患者中语境处理与不同社会认知方面的关系。
本研究纳入了 41 名精神分裂症患者和 32 名健康对照组。参与者完成了《社会推理意识测验》的两个部分：（1）社会推理简易（SI-M）和（2）社会推理丰富（SI-E）。他们还完成了面孔和声音情绪辨别任务。此外，我们使用 AX-连续表现测验（AX-CPT）来测量语境处理，使用 n-back 任务来更一般地测量工作记忆。
精神分裂症患者的 AX-CPT 表现与 SI-M 和 SI-E 表现呈正相关，但与面孔或声音辨别无关。此外，精神分裂症患者的 AX-CPT 表现与 SI-M/SI-E 表现之间的相关性明显强于对照组。
这些结果表明，语境处理的缺陷与精神分裂症的推理成分有关，而与识别面部或声音情绪的能力无关。因此，语境处理缺陷可能导致精神分裂症中“热”和“冷”认知方面的缺陷。
