Abstract
This study examines performance of schizophrenia patients, unaffected relatives and controls in social cognition, cognitive and psychiatric scales looking for possible markers of vulnerability in schizophrenia. Performance of schizophrenia patients from multiplex families, first-degree relatives, and matched controls was compared and, subsequently, discriminant analysis method was used for identifying the best predictors for group membership. By using Multigroup Discriminant Analyses on the three groups, the best predictors were PANSS, Premorbid Adjustment Scale, Faux Pas test, and a face/emotion categorizing task. This model obtained 82% correct global classification, suggesting that the combination of psychiatric scales and neuropsychological/social cognition tesks are the best approach for characterizing this disease. Although preliminary, our results suggest that social cognition tasks are robust markers of schizophrenia family impairments, and that combining clinical, social and neuropsychological measures is the best approach to asses patients and relatives vulnerability.
Highlights
Schizophrenia is a pervasive condition characterized by heterogeneous clinical,functional and cognitive manifestations [65]
Social cognition tests and psychiatric measures, scores were analyzed by entering the scores into a One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) comparing performance of patients, relatives, and controls
Faux Pas test scores showed a significant difference between the three groups (F(2,45) = 9.26; p < 0.001)
Summary
Schizophrenia is a pervasive condition characterized by heterogeneous clinical,functional and cognitive manifestations [65]. Recent research points towards conceiving schizophrenia as a neurodevelopmental disorder, following the complex interaction of environmental and genetic factors [47]. There is an ongoing debate regarding the degree of heritability of these deficits. The concept of endophenotype has re-emerged expecting to facilitate the study of genetic and environmental factors and their contribution to the deficits observed in schizophrenia. Endophenotype refers to hereditable and quantifiable characteristics associated to a disorder, and can be found in persons who have not manifested the disease [7]. Endophenotype might be multifactorial in origin, it is considered as an intermediate state between genes and development indicating a tendency to express a condi-
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