Social cognition in schizophrenia: a development of a test and pilot study during the course of day clinic
Abstract
Social cognition is defined as processes and functions that enable to a person to understand, to relate to and make use of the world of interpersonal relations. The goal of our work was to 1) create a test; 2) verify its characteristics and potential use in schizophrenic patients.
We developed a method called Social Cognition Test, in the pilot study, which was based on an original game by E. Bakalar (1976) that measures estimation of banal, common thinking of others as a possible key to adaptation and understanding of common social situations.
A short questionnaire method contains 15 items resulted from the pilot study. Each item has 4 possible choices.
Respondent makes his choice of "What most people would choose regarding those questions". We used the test to compare results in schizophrenic patients (N=14) at the beginning and at the end of a 6-week outpatient day care clinic.
Expected change was not found (increased performance) at the end of the outpatient day care clinic. Though, we found a different performance in schizophrenic patients in comparison to the controls (N=31).
Authors do plan further development of the test - possible changes in scoring, ecological validity examination and implementation of another, qualitative part of the test, concentrating on the process of thinking during the test.