Social Cognition, Negative Symptoms and Psychosocial Functioning in Schizophrenia

Abstract

Although functional recovery could be advocated as an achievable treatment goal, many e ective interventions for the treatment of psychotic symptoms, such as antipsychotic drugs, may not improve functioning. The last two decades of cognitive and clinical research on schizophrenia were a turning point for the rm acknowledgment of how relevant social cognitive de cits and negative symptoms could be in predicting psychosocial functioning. The relevance of so- cial cognition dysfunction in schizophrenia patients’ daily living is now unabated. In fact, social cognition de cits could be the most signi cant predictor of functionality in patients with schizophrenia, non-redundantly with neurocogni- tion. Emerging evidence suggests that negative symptoms appear to play an indirect role, mediating the relationship between neurocognition and social cognition with functional outcomes. Further explorations of this mediating role of negative symptoms have revealed that motivational de cits appear to be particularly important in explaining the relationship between both neurocognitive and social cognitive dysfunction and functional outcomes in schizophrenia. In this paper we will address the relative contribution of two key constructs—social cognitive de cits and negative symptoms, namely how intertwined they could be in daily life functioning of patients with schizophrenia.