Neuroscience Institute, Christian-Doppler University Hospital, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria.
Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
PLoS One. 2021 May 19;16(5):e0251180. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0251180. eCollection 2021.
Although there is convincing evidence for socio-cognitive impairments in schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD), little evidence is found for deficient moral cognition. We investigated whether patients with SSD showed altered moral judgments in a story task where the protagonist either had a neutral or malicious intention towards another person. This paradigm examined whether SSD relates to altered moral cognition in general or specifically to impaired integration of prior information (such as beliefs) in moral judgments.
23 patients and 32 healthy controls read vignettes created in a 2 x 2 design. The protagonist in each story either had a neutral or negative intention towards another person which, as a result, either died (negative outcome) or did not die (neutral outcome). Participants rated the moral permissibility of the protagonist's action. Standard null hypothesis significance testing and equivalent Bayes analyses are reported.
Schizophrenia patients did not differ significantly in permissibility ratings from healthy controls. This finding was supported by the Bayes analyses which favoured the null hypothesis. Task performance was not related to symptom severity or medication.
The current findings do not support the notion that moral judgments are deficient in schizophrenia. Furthermore, the current study shows that patients do not have observable difficulties in integrating the protagonist's belief in the rating of the moral permissibility of the action-outcome.
尽管有令人信服的证据表明精神分裂症谱系障碍（SSD）存在社会认知障碍，但很少有证据表明存在道德认知缺陷。我们研究了 SSD 患者在一个故事任务中是否表现出不同的道德判断，在这个任务中，主角对另一个人有中性或恶意的意图。这种范式检验了 SSD 是否与一般的道德认知改变有关，或者是否与道德判断中先前信息（如信念）的整合受损有关。
23 名患者和 32 名健康对照组阅读了在 2 x 2 设计中创建的小插曲。每个故事中的主角对另一个人都有中性或负面的意图，结果要么导致另一个人死亡（负面结果），要么没有死亡（中性结果）。参与者对主角行为的道德允许性进行了评分。报告了标准的假设检验和等效的贝叶斯分析。
精神分裂症患者在可允许性评分上与健康对照组没有显著差异。贝叶斯分析也支持了这一发现，该分析倾向于零假设。任务表现与症状严重程度或药物无关。
目前的研究结果不支持道德判断在精神分裂症中存在缺陷的观点。此外，本研究表明，患者在对行为结果的道德允许性进行评分时，没有明显的困难来整合主角的信念。
