title: Do patients with schizophrenia have a general or specific deficit in the perception of social threat? A meta-analytic study.
abstract: This study investigates whether social cognitive deficits found in patients with schizophrenia are specific to social threat stimuli, and whether the deficits increase across the delusion spectrum from a subclinical sample to clinical manifestation. The authors presented the meta-analytic review of the published literature on social threat perception performance in three kinds of group comparisons: a subclinical group and a healthy control group, a schizophrenia group and a healthy control group, and a schizophrenia with delusion symptoms group and a healthy control group. The meta-analysis of 20 studies yielded six weighted effect sizes. The largest differences were found between the schizophrenia with delusion group and the healthy controls in both the threat and non-threat conditions. No differences were found between the effect sizes in the threat-related condition and the non-threat condition in any of the three group comparisons. Age was found to be significantly correlated with the effect sizes. The performance differences in both the threat and non-threat conditions reflect a generalized performance deficit, rather than a specific deficit, in the perception of social threat stimuli among patients with schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Ting
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Raymond C K
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Chan
mesh_terms: D003702:Delusions / Q000150:complications; D006801:Humans; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications*; D012938:Social Perception