Social cognition and schizophrenia

People with schizophrenia often have problems with their cognition, including what psychologists call social cognition - perceiving people's emotions, recognising social cues and working out what other people are thinking. A team of researchers led by Shaun M. Eack from the University of Pittsburgh studied 133 people in an attempt to find out more about this. 70 of the participants were relatives of people with schizophrenia and were therefore thought to be at greater risk of developing the condition themselves while the rest of them were unaffected controls. The 'at-risk' participants were significantly more likely to assign emotions to neutral faces and to assign the faces negative emotions. They also found it harder to ascertain emotions on faces that were expressing different moods. There was no link between other cognition problems and social cognition. The more people attributed meanings to neutral faces the greater their symptoms of developing schizophrenia were

Eack, Shaun M. ... [et al] - Social cognition deficits among individuals at familial high risk for schizophrenia 36 (6), 1081–1088, 2010
Schizophrenia Bulletin