OBJECTIVES: Both story and cartoon task are sensitive to evaluate social cognition deficit in schizophrenia. However it is unclear whether social cognition deficits indexed by these tasks of schizophrenia reflect social functioning in their real life. To this purpose, we investigated the effect of social cognitive deficits detected in schizophrenic patients on social functioning. METHODS: Our investigation involved twenty-two schizophrenic patients and normal subjects. The story and cartoon tasks as mental state reasoning tasks and the 'Social Functioning Scale (SFS)' as a social functioning measure were administered for all subjects. RESULTS: The schizophrenic patients with average level of intelligence and mild psychotic symptoms, regarded as almost remitted, showed significantly poor performance on all of story task, cartoon task, and SFS. However, after controlling IQ's effects, only the performances on the story task were significantly contributed to the performances on the SFS, especially on subscales of 'Withdrawal', 'Independence performance' and 'Independence competence'. CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that performance of the story task is considered as a good predictor of social functioning for the schizophrenic patients in remission.
Cognition ; Humans ; Intelligence ; Schizophrenia