Social awareness of psychiatric and non-psychiatric patients

Abstract

Study was made of the performance of psychiatric patients (N=21) and non-psychiatric tubercular patients (N=27) on sociometric tasks and on tasks demanding recognition of fellow ward patients. Performance was measured on tasks using pictures and names, and on tasks requiring recall and recognition of names. All patients gave the most responses to pictures and gave more responses to tasks demanding recognition of names than to tasks demanding recall. While nonpsychiatric patients gave significantly more responses to the sociometric recall task, the psychiatric patients gave significantly more responses to pictorial sociometric tasks and were significantly more accurate in telling who was on their wards using both pictures and names. It would appear that the extent to which psychiatric patients are seen as unresponsive to their environment will depend very largely on the particular tests used to measure social awareness. To measure social awareness of psychiatric patients most extensively, reliance on recognition rather than recall tests and on non-verbal rather than verbal tests appears desirable. Using such tests psychiatric patients were able to manifest a level of social awareness significantly greater than their non-psychiatric peers.