Neuropsychological Evaluation of Social Cognition in Schizophrenia

Abstract

Objective.
Social cognition has become a valuable construct for the study and understan
ding of the nature
of schizophrenia, in particular to account for the difficulties in t
he social functioning characteristics of the
disorder. The terms used to refer to the social cognition, its defini
tion and associated subdomains vary widely
from one scientific paper to another. This has made the construct assessmen
t an especially difficult endeavor,
which has limited communication in the scientific field of its area an
d the direct comparison of findings across
studies. Given this situation, a systematic review of the literature is
made in this paper on social cognition in
schizophrenia in order to define the construct, identify the main domain
s and subdomains, levels of complexity
and instruments most used in the assessment.
Method.
First, we reviewed the electronic data bases ISI Web
of Knowledge, Medline, CSIC, PsycINFO and Academic Search Complete, seeking the terms
social cognition
schizophrenia
, and
psychosis
, separately, without field restriction, time limit, and limited to
the English and
Spanish languages.
Results.
Having identified the subdomains, their levels of complexity are determined
and
described, as well as the instruments most used for evaluation.
Conclusion.
Finally, an integrative proposal
is presented of the aspects that should be taken into account for th
e neuropsychological assessment of social
cognition in schizophrenia.