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Social Cognition in Schizophrenia

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Book cover Comprehensive Treatment of Schizophrenia

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Summary

This chapter discusses the main operational issues of a peculiar aspect of social cognition, “theory of mind,” and its implications in schizophrenia. A brief review of current literature on theory of mind is provided, together with an outline of our department’s contribution to this issue in the evaluation of a small sample of people affected by chronic schizophrenia and divided into subgroups according to psychopathological dimensions compared with normal controls. People with chronic schizophrenia and normal IQs have significantly worse performances than normal controls in both first- and second-order theory of mind stories. In first-order stories (a false belief about the state of the world), significant differences were found among psychopathological dimensions. As for second-order stories (a false belief about the belief of another character), one out of four patients subgroups performed worse than the others in one of the four theory of mind stories in our experimental model. Social cognition abilities may be a relevant aspect in social interactions involving people affected by schizophrenia and need to be further investigated in clinical research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychiatric Department, University of L’Aquila, Coppito, Nuovo Ospedale S. Salvatore, 67100, L’Aquila, Italy

    Massimo Casacchia, Monica Mazza, Alessandro De Risio & Rita Roncone

Authors
  1. Massimo Casacchia
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  2. Monica Mazza
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  3. Alessandro De Risio
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  4. Rita Roncone
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neuropsychiatry, School of Medicine, Keio University, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 160-8582, Japan

    Haruo Kashima M.D. (Professor), Masafumi Mizuno M.D. (Instructor) & Masahiro Asai M.D. (Guest Professor) (Professor),  (Instructor) &  (Guest Professor)

  2. School of Medicine, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand

    Ian R. H. Falloon M.D. (Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioural Science) (Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioural Science)

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Tokyo

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Casacchia, M., Mazza, M., De Risio, A., Roncone, R. (2002). Social Cognition in Schizophrenia. In: Kashima, H., Falloon, I.R.H., Mizuno, M., Asai, M. (eds) Comprehensive Treatment of Schizophrenia. Keio University International Symposia for Life Sciences and Medicine, vol 8. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-68514-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-68514-2_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Tokyo

  • Print ISBN: 978-4-431-68516-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-4-431-68514-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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