Abstract
Schizophrenia has been characterized by an impaired mentalizing. It has been suggested that distinguishing implicit from explicit processes is crucial in social cognition, and only the latter might be affected in schizophrenia. Two other questions remain open: (1) Is schizophrenia characterized by an hypo- or hyper attribution of intentions? (2) Is it characterized by a deficit in the attribution of intention or of contingency? To test these three questions, spontaneous mentalizing was tested in 29 individuals with schizophrenia and 29 control subjects using the Frith-Happé animations, while eye movements were recorded. Explicit mentalizing was measured from participants’ verbal descriptions and was contrasted with implicit mentalizing measured through eye tracking. As a group, patients made less accurate and less intentional descriptions of the goal-directed and theory of mind animations. No group differences were found in the attribution of contingency. Eye tracking results revealed that patients and controls showed a similar modulation of eye movements in response to the mental states displayed in the Frith-Happé animations. To conclude, in this paradigm, participants with schizophrenia showed a dissociation between explicit and implicit mentalizing, with a decrease in the explicit attribution of intentions, whereas their eye movements suggested a preserved implicit perception of intentions.
Highlights
The other important issue is the distinction between implicit and explicit processing, which Frith and Frith (2008) have convincingly argued is of great relevance to the study of social cognition
Fixation duration has been used as an index of mentalizing as it increased from R to GD to Theory of Mind (ToM) animations[42]
According to Frith’s hypothesis, differences in the verbal descriptions of Frith-Happé animations between participants with schizophrenia and controls are expected based on previous research, the patterns of their eye movements are predicted to be equivalent
Summary
The other important issue is the distinction between implicit and explicit processing, which Frith and Frith (2008) have convincingly argued is of great relevance to the study of social cognition. The first aim of this study was to explore whether there were deficits in the explicit attribution of mental states and/or contingency to Frith-Happé animations in schizophrenia and whether these deficits were in the direction of a hyper- or hypo attribution It remains unclear whether mentalizing deficits in schizophrenia are primary or whether they are a consequence of other cognitive impairments like executive functioning. According to Frith’s hypothesis, differences in the verbal descriptions of Frith-Happé animations between participants with schizophrenia and controls are expected based on previous research, the patterns of their eye movements are predicted to be equivalent If this were the case, this would provide evidence for a dissociation between preserved implicit mentalizing and disrupted explicit mentalizing in schizophrenia
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