title: General and social cognition in remitted first-episode schizophrenia patients: a comparative study.
abstract: The aim of this paper was to investigate whether both neurocognitive and social cognitive performances were different between remitted first-episode schizophrenia patients, non-remitters and healthy controls (HC). We assessed social cognition (Degraded Facial Affect Recognition Task-DFAR and Emotional Mentalizing Task-EMT) and neurocognition (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and Word Learning Test-WLT) in 174 remitted first-episode schizophrenia patients, 110 non-remitted first-episode schizophrenia patients and 320 HC. Multivariate analyses of variance with age, gender and IQ as covariates (MANCOVA) were performed to compare mean cognitive test scores between the three groups. Remitted first-episode schizophrenia patients performed significantly worse than HC only in one verbal memory task (WLT immediate recall; p = 0.004); in the same test, they were significantly better than non-remitters (p = 0.027). Non-remitted first-episode schizophrenia patients, differently from remitters, performed significantly worse than HC in terms of social cognition (EMT-p < 0.05 and DFAR-p < 0.05). Remitted first-episode schizophrenia patients presented worse cognitive performance than HC in verbal memory tasks, but not in facial affect recognition and in ToM, while non-remitters did; these results suggest that neurocognitive deficits are the core hallmark of schizophrenia and that social cognition is relatively unaffected in remitted patients after their first episode.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Milan, Fondazione IRCCS Ca'Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Via F. Sforza 35, 20122, Milan, Italy. alyscaldi@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Alice
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Caldiroli
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Milan, Fondazione IRCCS Ca'Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Via F. Sforza 35, 20122, Milan, Italy.|Department of Psychiatry, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Massimiliano
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Buoli
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Milan, Fondazione IRCCS Ca'Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Via F. Sforza 35, 20122, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Serati
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Wiepke
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cahn
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Milan, Fondazione IRCCS Ca'Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Via F. Sforza 35, 20122, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: A Carlo
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Altamura
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D060825:Cognitive Dysfunction / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D012074:Remission Induction; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012938:Social Perception
keywords: Facial recognition; Remission; Social cognition; State marker; Trait marker; Verbal memory