What is social perception in schizophrenia?

Social perception in schizophrenia is the ability to detect and interpret social roles, rules, and contexts by attending to relevant cues, enabling appropriate interpretation of social situations.

What are the phases of social perception?

Social perception involves two phases: categorizing perceived behavior and attributing causes (stable traits versus situational factors); the attribution phase demands greater cognitive effort.

What is social knowledge in schizophrenia?

Social knowledge comprises stored information about typical roles, rules, goals and behaviors in common situations that guides correct identification of social cues and expected conduct.

How is social perception assessed in schizophrenia?

Assessment uses tasks presenting filmed or written social interactions followed by questionnaires or ratings to evaluate cue recognition, emotion perception, sequencing, and situational feature identification.

Which tests measure social perception and social knowledge?

Common instruments include the Social Cues Recognition Test (SCRT), Videotape Affect Perception Test (VAPT), PONS, Relationships Across Domains (RAD), SCRT‑R, and Situational Features Recognition Test (SFRT).

What deficits in social perception occur in schizophrenia?

Deficits include impaired use of contextual information, difficulty updating first impressions, attention to irrelevant features, and problems grasping abstract or unfamiliar social cues.

Social perception and social knowledge in schizophrenia

Dr. Carlos Rebolleda, PhD in Psychology, presents the assessment of social perception and social knowledge in schizophrenia.

Definition of social perception in schizophrenia

The term social perception refers to the individual’s ability to identify social roles, social rules and social contexts (Green and Horan, 2010). It refers to perceptual processes related to the person’s ability to direct attention to those key cues that can help them appropriately interpret the different social situations in which they are involved.

Phases

It involves two phases, the first of which is based on the categorization of perceived behavior; the second is related to the evaluation of whether such behavior is due to stable states or contextual factors, this phase being the one that imposes a greater cost on the individual, since it requires an attributional assessment (Bellack, Blanchard and Mueser, 1996; Newman and Uleman, 1993).

Social knowledge

Social perception is generally associated with another domain of social cognition called social knowledge or social schema, considered the ability to identify the various components that can make up a social situation (Corrigan and Green, 1993; Green et al., 2005).

For a person to be able to correctly identify the social cues of a given context, it is essential that they have knowledge about what is typical in that situation. Therefore, social knowledge is the ability that allows the individual to orient themselves in a social situation by guiding them regarding the role they occupy, the rules they must follow, the reasons why they are in that situation, and the behavior they should display in it.

Assessment of social perception in schizophrenia

Some tests are intended to measure social perception and others social knowledge. The tests that have been commonly used to measure these components are the following:

Social Cues Recognition Test (SCRT) (Corrigan and Green, 1993)

Designed to measure social perception. It consists of eight situations of two to three minutes, presented to the subject on video, in which two or three people are talking to each other. After viewing each situation, a questionnaire composed of 36 true-or-false questions about the presence of specific and abstract social cues must be answered.

Videotape Affect Perception Test (VAPT) (Bellack et al., 1996)

Measures social perception. It presents subjects with 30 scenes from films and television programs in which a brief interaction between two people appears, one of whom displays affective responses that can range from very pleasant to very unpleasant. After each of these scenes, the pleasantness-unpleasantness and activation-deactivation of them must be rated on a nine-point scale. Finally, the scene is rated by choosing which basic emotion best fits it.

The Half-Profile of Nonverbal Sensivity (PONS) (Ambady, Hallahan and Rosenthal, 1995; Rosenthal et al., 1979):

Instrument designed to measure social perception. It is composed of 110 scenes recorded on video that contain facial expressions, intonations and gestures performed by a woman. After viewing each scene, two possible response options are given to the subject and they must choose which of the two best describes the situation presented.

Relationships Across Domains (RAD) (Sergi et al., 2009):

Assesses social perception. It is a 75-item test devised to measure the subject’s competence in perceiving discrete social cues, such as posture or hand gestures. Twenty-five social interactions between a man and a woman are presented in vignette form. After the presentation of each vignette, three questions are asked about possible behaviors that the members of the presented couple could carry out, and it must be inferred whether the characters would perform those behaviors.

Schema Comprension Sequencing Test-Revised (SCRT-R) (Corrigan and Addis, 1995): Created to measure social knowledge.

It consists of 12 cards that, in turn, describe different social situations (for example: going to the movies, going shopping). In the administration of this test two variables are manipulated: the first is the length of the sequence presented, which can be short or long. The second is the contextual information provided to the subject beforehand, since some cards are titled and others are not. The time used by the subject to complete the task and the number of consecutive correct actions are the factors taken into account to evaluate performance.

Situational Features Recognition Test (SFRT) (Corrigan and Green, 1993; Corrigan, Buicam and Toomey, 1996):

Measures social knowledge. It is a paper-and-pencil test in which participants are asked to identify features from a list composed of five situations that may be familiar to the subject (for example, reading in a library), and four others that are unlikely to be familiar (for example, building an igloo). The list to be completed includes six features and eight distractor items that, in turn, correspond to actions, roles, rules and goals related to each of the situations presented.

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Deficits in schizophrenia

Ruiz et al. (2006) report that within the two phases that compose social perception, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia show the greatest deficits in the phase responsible for deciding whether behavior is due to stable states or situational factors, due to their difficulty in modifying first impressions.

Several studies have shown that these patients’ ability to use contextual information is deficient (Penn et al., 2002), sometimes spending more time on the less relevant features (Phillips and David, 1998) and showing significant deficits in grasping abstract or unfamiliar information (Nuechterlein and Dawson, 1984). All of these aspects contribute to creating a deficient perception of relevant social stimuli.

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