Relationships between neuropsychological performance, insight, medication adherence, and social metacognition in schizophrenia

Background: Social metacognition is still poorly understood in schizophrenia, particularly its neuropsychological basis and its impact on insight and medication adherence. We therefore quantified social metacognition as the agreement between objective and subjective mentalization and assessed its correlates in a sample of individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders.Methods: Participants consisted of 143 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders who underwent a metacognitive version of a mentalization task, an extensive neuropsychological battery, and a clinical evaluation to assess their insight into illness and medication adherence. We studied potential interactions between confidence judgments and several neuropsychological and clinical variables on mentalization accuracy with mixed-effects multiple logistic regressions.Results: Confidence judgments were closely associated with mentalization accuracy, indicative of good social metacognition in this task. Working memory, visual memory, and reasoning and problem-solving were the three neuropsychological dimensions positively associated with metacognition. By contrast, the two measures of medication adherence were associated with poorer metacognition, whereas no association was found between metacognition and clinical insight. The multiple regression model showed a significant positive impact of better working memory, older age at onset, longer duration of hospitalization, and worse medication adherence on social metacognition.Conclusions: We discuss possible mechanisms underlying the apparent association between social metacognition and working memory. Adherence should be monitored when remediating social metacognition, and psycho -education should be given to patients with a high level of awareness of their capacity to mentalize.

Automated summary

This study quantified social metacognition in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and explored its neuropsychological basis and impact on insight and medication adherence. The results showed a close association between confidence judgments and metacognition accuracy, as well as positive correlations between working memory, visual memory, reasoning and problem-solving, and metacognition. Poorer medication adherence was also associated with poorer metacognition. These findings have implications for monitoring adherence and providing psychoeducation for patients with high self-awareness of their ability to mentalize.