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Gardner MR, Buchanan T. Spontaneous perspective-taking and its relation to schizotypy. Cogn Neuropsychiatry 2023; 28:181-195. [PMID: 36924343 DOI: 10.1080/13546805.2023.2189575] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/18/2023]
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Patients with schizophrenia differ from healthy controls in the extent that they spontaneously take another's perspective. For such effects, it is difficult to separate the influence of schizophrenia from multiple potential confounders. Here, for the first time, associations between spontaneous perspective-taking and schizotypy were investigated in a nonclinical population. METHODS Adult participants completed both a Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ-BRU) and a novel online adaptation of a visual perspective-taking task that required participants to make judgements both from their own perspective and that of a human avatar. RESULTS Response times were elevated when the avatar's perspective was inconsistent with that of the participant, providing evidence of spontaneous perspective-taking. This demonstrates that the visual perspective-taking task can be successfully implemented in an online format. However, schizotypy did not predict these spontaneous perspective-taking effects. CONCLUSIONS Unlike explicit mentalising, this form of implicit mentalising is not affected by nonclinical manifestations of schizotypy traits. This implies that impairment of general neurocognitive function contributes to altered spontaneous perspective-taking in schizophrenia. A novel account based on the cognitive control processes involved in perspective selection and the role of attention in perspective calculation reconciles apparently contradictory findings of earlier studies comparing patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Tom Buchanan
- Psychology, University of Westminster, London, UK
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Are there quantitative differences between eye-gaze and arrow cues? A meta-analytic answer to the debate and a call for qualitative differences. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2023; 144:104993. [PMID: 36496190 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104993] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/20/2022] [Revised: 12/03/2022] [Accepted: 12/05/2022] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Gaze acts from an early age as a cue to orient attention and, thereafter, to infer our social partners' intentions, thoughts, and emotions. Variants of the attentional orienting paradigm have been used to study the orienting capabilities associated to eye gaze. However, to date, it is still unclear whether this methodology truly assesses "social-specific" processes exclusively involved in attention to eye-gaze or the operation of domain-general attentional processes. The present study provides a comprehensive meta-analysis indicating that eye-gaze and non-social directional stimuli, such as arrows, produce equivalent attentional effects. This result casts doubt on the potential utility of the classic cueing task in revealing social-specific processes. On the other hand, we review behavioral evidence suggesting that eye-gaze stimuli may induce higher-order social processes when more specific experimental procedures that analyze qualitative rather than quantitative differences are used. These findings point to an integrated view in which domain-general and social specific processes both contribute to the attentional mechanisms induced by eye-gaze direction. Finally, some proposals about the social components specifically triggered by eye-gaze stimuli are discussed.
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Csulak T, Hajnal A, Kiss S, Dembrovszky F, Varjú-Solymár M, Sipos Z, Kovács MA, Herold M, Varga E, Hegyi P, Tényi T, Herold R. Implicit Mentalizing in Patients With Schizophrenia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Front Psychol 2022; 13:790494. [PMID: 35185724 PMCID: PMC8847732 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.790494] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2021] [Accepted: 01/10/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Mentalizing is a key aspect of social cognition. Several researchers assume that mentalization has two systems, an explicit one (conscious, relatively slow, flexible, verbal, inferential) and an implicit one (unconscious, automatic, fast, non-verbal, intuitive). In schizophrenia, several studies have confirmed the deficit of explicit mentalizing, but little data are available on non-explicit mentalizing. However, increasing research activity can be detected recently in implicit mentalizing. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to summarize the existing results of implicit mentalizing in schizophrenia. METHODS A systematic search was performed in four major databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Web of Science. Eleven publications were selected. Five studies were found to be eligible for quantitative synthesis, and 9 studies were included in qualitative synthesis. RESULTS The meta-analysis revealed significantly lower accuracy, slower reaction time during implicit mentalizing in patients with schizophrenia. The systematic review found different brain activation pattern, further alterations in visual scanning, cue fixation, face looking time, and difficulties in perspective taking. DISCUSSION Overall, in addition to the deficit of explicit mentalization, implicit mentalization performance is also affected in schizophrenia, if not to the same extent. It seems likely that some elements of implicit mentalization might be relatively unaffected (e.g., detection of intentionality), but the effectiveness is limited by certain neurocognitive deficits. These alterations in implicit mentalizing can also have potential therapeutic consequences.Systematic Review Registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, identifier: CRD42021231312.
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Affiliation(s)
- Timea Csulak
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary.,Doctoral School of Clinical Neurosciences, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - András Hajnal
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - Szabolcs Kiss
- Medical School, Institute for Translational Medicine, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - Fanni Dembrovszky
- Medical School, Institute for Translational Medicine, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - Margit Varjú-Solymár
- Medical School, Institute for Translational Medicine, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - Zoltán Sipos
- Medical School, Institute for Translational Medicine, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - Márton Aron Kovács
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary.,Doctoral School of Clinical Neurosciences, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - Márton Herold
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary.,Doctoral School of Clinical Neurosciences, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - Eszter Varga
- Department of Pediatrics, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - Péter Hegyi
- Medical School, Institute for Translational Medicine, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - Tamás Tényi
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
| | - Róbert Herold
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary
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Zhai J, Xie J, Chen J, Huang Y, Ma Y, Huang Y. The presence of other-race people disrupts spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking. Scand J Psychol 2021; 62:655-664. [PMID: 34191306 DOI: 10.1111/sjop.12751] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/12/2020] [Accepted: 04/26/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Visual perspective taking is an essential skill for effective social interaction. Previous studies have tested various perceiver-based factors that affect intentional perspective taking; however, the factors affecting spontaneous perspective taking remain unknown. To fill this gap, the present study used a novel spontaneous visual perspective taking paradigm to explore how an agent's race and emotion affect spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking. In Experiment 1, the participants completed a mental rotation task while a human agent simultaneously gazed at the target with positive, negative, or neutral facial expressions. The agent was African, Caucasian, or Chinese. The results revealed that the other-race agents disrupted the participants' spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking, while emotion weakly affected it. Experiment 2 retested whether emotion could affect spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking while only own-race agents were used. The participants completed the same task as that in Experiment 1. The results revealed that emotions weakly affected spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking. In summary, the present study first examined what target-based factors affect spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking. The results extend the representation and incorporation of the close others' responses (RICOR) model. Specifically, people routinely construct representations of other people's points of view when they share the same racial group.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jing Zhai
- School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
| | - Jiushu Xie
- School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
| | - Jiahan Chen
- School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
| | - Yujie Huang
- School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
| | - Yuchao Ma
- School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
| | - Yanli Huang
- School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
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Yang F, Ma H, Yuan J, Wei Y, Xu L, Zhang Y, Kang C, Yang J. Correlation of abnormalities in resting state fMRI with executive functioning in chronic schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res 2021; 299:113862. [PMID: 33735738 DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2021.113862] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/04/2021] [Accepted: 03/06/2021] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Although previous studies have consistently demonstrated that neurocognitive and social cognitive impairments are commonly observed in schizophrenia, the neural substrates of deficits of cognitive function remain unclear, especially for the chronic schizophrenia. There has been little resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) study of cognitive function in chronic schizophrenia. In this study we aimed to investigate the changes of rs-fMRI signals with regional homogeneity (ReHo), and explore the correlations between abnormal regional activity and cognitive function in chronic schizophrenia. METHODS Altogether 76 subjects, 37 patients with chronic schizophrenia and 39 normal controls matched approximately for age, gender and education level were enrolled. All subjects were evaluated psychotic symptoms by Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and cognitive function by Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Conventional MRI and rs-fMRI were performed in all subjects. ReHo was calculated to measure the temporal synchronization of a given voxel and its neighboring voxels based on Kendall coefficient of concordance (KCC) in the rs-fMRI. RESULTS For the numbers of achieved categories, percentage of conceptual level response in the scores of WCST, the patient group was significantly lower than the control group (p<0.05). For the total errors, perseverative errors, non-perseverative errors, the patient group was significantly higher than the control group (p<0.05). Significant differences in ReHo were found in 11 regions (included five activated and five with decreased activity in the cerebrum and one with decreased activity in the cerebellum) in the chronic schizophrenia patients when compared with the normal controls. The ReHo map clusters that were significantly different between the two groups showed no significant correlation with clinical symptoms. Correlation of the whole brain with subscores of PANSS-T, PANSS-P, PANSS-N and WCST were significantly found in some regions. CONCLUSIONS The study identified five increased and six decreased spontaneous synchrony in the cerebrum and cerebellum in chronic schizophrenia patients compared to the normal matched controls, which were associated with positive, negative symptoms, and deficits of executive functioning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fan Yang
- Department of Psychiatry, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650101, China; Department of Psychiatry, Inner Mongolia People's Hospital, Inner Mongolia 010020, China
| | - Huan Ma
- Department of Psychiatry, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650101, China; Department of Radiology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650018, China
| | - Jing Yuan
- Department of Psychiatry, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650101, China
| | - Yujun Wei
- Department of Psychiatry, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650101, China
| | - Li Xu
- Department of Psychiatry, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650101, China
| | - Yan Zhang
- Department of Psychiatry, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650101, China
| | - Chuanyuan Kang
- Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200120, China
| | - Jianzhong Yang
- Department of Psychiatry, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650101, China.
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Exploring neurophysiological markers of visual perspective taking: Methodological considerations. Int J Psychophysiol 2021; 161:1-12. [PMID: 33388368 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2020.12.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/03/2020] [Revised: 11/04/2020] [Accepted: 12/23/2020] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
RATIONALE For visual perspective taking (VPT) using the avatar task, examinations of neural processes using event related potentials (ERP) indicate a distinction between an early posterior perspective calculation process (P3) and a later frontal process (LFSW) managing perspective conflict. While it is unknown if these neural processes are affected in clinical populations, it is unclear if the avatar task can be applied to this group, due to the long duration and sensitivity to data loss. Thus, we performed a methodological study of the avatar task, testing the feasibility of a shortened experimental paradigm. OBJECTIVE To investigate whether previously reported behavioural and ERP effects in the avatar task can also be seen if analysing all trials (matching/non-matching) jointly, and whether they remain robust if only a subset of the data is analysed. METHOD Healthy individuals (n = 20) completed the avatar task with ERP measurement. ERP components (P3, LFSW) and behavioural data were investigated by A) comparing use of only matching trials (n = 384) versus all trials (n = 768), and B) examining if reduced duration of assessment, by analysing only a subset of the data, impacts ERP findings. RESULTS We observed minimal differences when analysing data from only matching trial types compared to all trial types. Further, ERP amplitudes and latency findings were replicated when analysing only a subset of the data. CONCLUSIONS The duration of the avatar task can be reduced to avoid long testing times, thus making it better suited for use in clinical populations.
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