Abstract
This study examined the factor structure of social cognition in a Norwegian sample of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia (n = 83). Eight variables from three social cognitive tests from three theoretical domains were included: emotion processing, social perception and theory of mind. Factor analysis with maximum likelihood extraction and oblique rotation resulted in two factors using Kaiser's criterion. Although the two-factor model had better fit than a unifactorial model, it did not represent the data well. Two social cognitive variables did not load on either factor. The two extracted factors did not correspond to an expected distinction between low and high level of processing or between affective and cognitive processes. A non-negligible number of nonredundant residuals between observed and computed correlations suggested poor model fit. In conclusion, this study failed to identify separable dimensions of social cognition in spite of including measures from different theoretical domains.
Highlights
In spite of its prominence in cognitive research on schizophrenia, the basic structure of social cognition remains unknown
Social cognition in schizophrenia is usually divided into 4–5 domains (Pinkham, 2014): emotion processing, social perception/knowledge, attributional style, and theory of mind (ToM) (Green et al, 2008)
Examples are the use of different social cognitive tests, different number of tests, tests from different theoretical domains, and differences among participants included in study samples
Summary
In spite of its prominence in cognitive research on schizophrenia, the basic structure of social cognition remains unknown. In an early study, Mancuso et al (2011) identified a threefactor structure, consisting of attributional style, along with low- and high-level social cognition. Of other consistent findings is the tendency for measures of attributional style to load on a separate factor (Buck et al, 2016; Mehta et al, 2014) This aligns with how attributional style associates with other features of schizophrenia, showing non-trivial relationships with positive symptoms (Combs et al, 2009) unlike other social cognitive domains (Ventura et al, 2013). Given previous findings of two factors in studies that have excluded the domain of attributional style, we hypothesize that we will find two factors, corresponding to low- (emotion processing) and high- (social perception, ToM) level social cognition
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