Situational familiarity and feature recognition in schizophrenia.
Research has shown that schizophrenia patients are less able to identify a situation's abstract features (goals) than its concrete features (actions). However, it has been unclear whether this differential deficit represents a cognitive dysfunction or a lack of familiarity with many situations because of impoverished social experiences. Twenty-nine inpatients with DSM-III-R diagnosis of schizophrenia completed the Situational Feature Recognition Test, Version 2 (SFRT-2). The SFRT-2 included familiar and unfamiliar situations of which subjects were asked to identify characteristic goals and actions. A 2 x 2 x 2 analysis of variance (group by feature abstraction by situational familiarity) found a significant three-way interaction. Post-hoc analyses suggested that patients were better able to recognize concrete features in familiar situations. Differences in discriminating power of the four conditions of the SFRT-2 had been diminished on standardization and cross-validation groups. Therefore, the differential deficits shown by the patient sample probably do not represent psychometric confound. Implications for remediation of social cognitive deficits are discussed.
Corrigan
P W
PW
University of Chicago Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, IL 60477, USA.
Silverman
R
R
Stephenson
J
J
Nugent-Hirschbeck
J
J
Buican
B J
BJ
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011340:Problem Solving; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012931:Social Environment