Abstract
The aim of the present study was to investigate the social cognitive functioning of participants with depression when compared with healthy controls, and to assess the impact of symptom severity. One hundred and eight patients with depression (66 remitted and 42 current) and 52 healthy controls were assessed using the Wechsler Advanced Clinical Solutions: Social Perception Subtest, measuring facial affect recognition in isolation and in combination with prosody and body language interpretation. When healthy controls, remitted depression and currently depressed groups were compared, no associations were found on any of the social cognition subscales. Severity of depressive and anxious symptoms predicted performance on all social cognition subscales in currently depressed participants, controlling for age, gender, education and psychotropic medication. Affective depressive symptoms were inversely related to ACS Pairs and Prosody subscales, while somatic symptoms were inversely related to the ACS Affect Recognition and Total scores. There was no association between severity and the WAIS ACS in remitted depression participants. People with MDD exhibiting more severe depressive and anxious symptoms and a cluster of affective symptoms have greater difficulty undertaking complex social cognitive tasks. Given the state like nature to these deficits, these impairments may cause problems with day to day functioning and have implications in targeted therapeutic interventions.
Highlights
Numerous studies have found that depressed patients demonstrate significantly poorer social cognition compared with healthy controls (Surguladze et al, 2004; Langenecker et al, 2005; Csukly et al, 2009; Szily and Kéri, 2009; Harkness et al, 2011; Van Wingen et al, 2011)
Significant differences in symptom severity were found between major depressive disorder (MDD) and healthy control participants for the SIGH-AD Depression (t = −9.1, df = 156, p < 0.001), SIGH-AD Anxiety (t = −9.0, df = 156, p < 0.001) and SIGH-AD total score (t = −9.4, df = 156, p < 0.001)
OneWay ANOVAs revealed there was a significant difference between healthy controls, remitted depression and currently depressed groups on the SIGH-AD depression [F(2, 154) = 101.01, p < 0.001] and anxiety [F(2, 154) = 79.55, p < 0.001] subscales
Summary
Social cognition can be defined as the mental operations that underlie social interactions, including perceiving, interpreting, and generating responses to the intentions, dispositions, and behaviors of others (Green et al, 2008). This can include emotion-processing, theory of mind, and social perception and knowledge. Numerous studies have found that depressed patients demonstrate significantly poorer social cognition compared with healthy controls (Surguladze et al, 2004; Langenecker et al, 2005; Csukly et al, 2009; Szily and Kéri, 2009; Harkness et al, 2011; Van Wingen et al, 2011). Other studies have found no group difference between depressed patients and controls on a variety of measures of social cognition, including prosodic stimuli (Kan et al, 2004), visual perception (Bazin et al, 2009), and affect recognition (Joormann and Gotlib, 2006; Suslow et al, 2010; Bertoux et al, 2012)
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