Impairments of social cues recognition and social functioning in Chinese people with schizophrenia

Previous studies have suggested that social cognition deficits, and impaired social functioning, were associated with schizophrenia. However, specificity of the relationships between social cues recognition and social functioning remain largely undefined. The authors speculated that the two were related, and further that recognition of verbal and non-verbal social cues were impaired in people with schizophrenia. A total of 71 people (40 schizophrenia patients and 31 matched normal controls) voluntarily participated in this study. Social cues recognition abilities were measured by the eye gaze discrimination task and the faux pas recognition task. Social functioning was assessed using the Social Functioning Scale. Correlation analysis revealed a significant association between faux pas and, in particular, the social functioning subscales of the Social Functioning Scale (independence and employment) in patients with schizophrenia. Furthermore, the authors also observed that clinical participants performed significantly worse in both the eye gaze discrimination and faux pas recognition tasks than their healthy counterparts. These findings suggested that impaired social cues recognition in people with schizophrenia may be a possible explanation for their impaired social functioning.