Mental state references in psychosis: a pilot study of prompted implicit mentalising during dialogue and its relationship with social functioning.
BACKGROUND
Few studies of psychosis have examined dialogue-based implicit mentalising even though this is likely to reflect the skills required in everyday life better than more typical mentalising tasks. Using a semistructured dialogue task, we predicted that a psychosis sample would be impaired in "prompted" online mentalising (i.e., the frequency and variety of mental and emotional state words as well as references to own mental state) and that performance would relate to social functioning.


METHODS
Eighteen adults with psychosis and nine healthy adults were each recorded during four semistructured dialogues, which were transcribed, coded, scored, and quantitatively analysed. The patients also completed a measure of social functioning.


RESULTS
Compared to controls, the psychosis participants referred to others' mental and emotional states significantly less and with a lower variety of words. These findings were all large effects with sufficient observed power. There was no significant difference in references to own mental state. The relationships between mentalising and social functioning were mostly modest.


CONCLUSIONS
Although prompted implicit mentalising is impoverished in psychosis, self-knowledge appears to be intact. Simulation-based mentalising may be spared in the context of impoverished theory-based mentalising. Also, implicit mentalising contributes to social functioning, corroborating the results of previous work.
Stewart
Suzanne L K
SL
School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. suzanne.stewart@manchester.ac.uk
Corcoran
Rhiannon
R
Drake
Richard J
RJ
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; D003142:Communication; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult