Abstract

Social cognition (SC) involves a suite of neurocognitive and neuropsychological functions that are relevant to and crucial for successful navigation and overall functioning. Within this suite are domains of function such as emotion processing/recognition, attributional style/bias, and theory of mind. In individuals with schizophrenia and first episode psychosis (FEP), these faculties are grossly impaired, and result in difficulties with occupational, social, and basic functioning. Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) is a treatment intervention that was developed to improve these SC domain impairments in individuals with Schizophrenia, but has not been experimentally applied to FEP populations as thoroughly, where the same neurological and functional impairments are found. This study attempts to apply SCIT to FEP individuals in attempt to investigate the potential utility of the treatment intervention in improving these SC and functional impairment. For this study, FEP participants were assigned to either the SCIT group, or a control group (i.e., conversational skills group), and were assessed pre-treatment and post-treatment for impairments in multiple SC domains, and for functional impairments. Results showed that the SCIT group participants showed improvements in multiple domains of SC function, as well as functional impairments; these results also showed that these improvements within the SCIT group were greater than those in the control group. Finally, results showed that the functional improvements observed within the SCIT group were mediated by the observed SC domain improvements. These findings may improve our understanding of the potential for preventative treatments for symptom and disease progression in FEP individuals.

Date of publication

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

english

Persistent identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10950/4879

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