Social cue perception in Japanese schizophrenic patients.

Although abnormal social cue perception in schizophrenia is thought to be a factor in impairing the acquisition of social skills, there have been no studies on social cue perception in Japanese schizophrenics. In order to clarify the characteristics of social cue perception in Japanese schizophrenic patients, 46 schizophrenics and 41 normal controls were presented 12 videotaped vignettes of interpersonal situations, and then they were asked true-false questions about the interaction viewed. Additionally, schizophrenics were administered the Bech version of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale. The results showed that the schizophrenic group showed a poorer performance on the cue recognition task than the normal group, and in particular, schizophrenics exhibiting false alarm errors were seen more often than schizophrenics exhibiting omission errors. This suggests that false recognition of information that does not actually exist in social situation is an important characteristic of social cue perception in schizophrenic patients. The false alarm rates on the cue recognition task in schizophrenics were related to the severity of positive-thought disorder, but not to that of negative symptoms. There was no significant relationship between the omission error rates and the two symptom scores in schizophrenics. Faulty cue recognition and positive-thought disorder may be due to a common factor.