Social Cognitive Assessment in Autism and Schizophrenia
Condition: Schizophrenia
MeSH terms: Schizophrenia
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      In people with schizophrenia or people with autism, impairments of social cognition are a
      core feature of the disease and, according to researchers who represent valuable references
      on this subject for the international community, three to five processes of social cognition
      are usually altered in those diseases: (1) emotional processing which is the ability to
      identify emotions through facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice, (2) theory of mind
      (ToM), which is defined as "the ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, intents,
      desires, …) to oneself and others, and to understand that others have beliefs, intentions,
      and desires that are different from one's own", (3) attributional style which refers to how
      people explain the causes of positive and negative events, and corresponding, in
      schizophrenia, to self-serving and personalizing bias that means a tendency to blame others
      for negative life events rather than sharing the responsibilities between different sources;
      and (4 and 5) social perception and knowledge, which can be defined as decoding and
      interpreting social cues from others, taking the social context into account, and knowing
      social rules, roles, and goals. Components of social cognition appear to be related to both
      symptomatology and functioning in everyday life. The present study aims to assess a new
      social cognitive battery developed by several teams in France: ClaCoS.
    

Detailed description: 
      The project's objectives are: (1) to assess relevance of ClaCoS in schizophrenia and autism
      compared to healthy controls, and to analyze links between social cognition and both
      neurocognition and symptoms, (2) to collect data in a large sample of healthy controls in
      order to establish appropriate standards for tools composing ClaCoS battery.

      For the first objective, three kind of evaluation will be proposed: clinical, neurocognitive
      and social cognitive (ClaCoS). Three populations of 80 participants will be compared: healthy
      controls, patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders, and patients with autism
      spectrum disorders. These three groups will be matched on sex, age and level of education.

      For the second objective a systematic collection of data will be carried out in a large
      sample of healthy controls. In this part of the study, only social cognitive measures will be
      recorded. Subjects will be ranked according to three criteria: three classes for age (18-25
      years old, 26-35 and 36-45), five classes for socio-professional status according to the
      INSEE classification, and two classes for sex (men/women).
    

Intervention name(s): schizophrenia; Autism; Healthy controls
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): The battery (ClaCoS) is composed by 6 tests and several scores will be recorded for each:
for emotion perception : Facial emotions recognition task (TREF)
for theory of mind : Movie for the assessment of social cognition ( MASC-VF)
for attributional bias : Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire ( AIHQ)
for social perception and knowledge : interpretation score - with and without index, comprehension score ( PerSo )
for empathy :Questionnaire of cognitive and affective empathy ( QCAE) for people with schizophrenia
for self assessment : Self - assessment of social cognition (ACSo); The battery (ClaCoS ) is composed by 6 tests and several scores will be recorded for each:
for emotion perception : Facial emotions recognition task(TREF ): total score, score per emotion, detection levels
for theory of mind : Movie for the assessment of social cognition (MASC ) :total score, error type
for attributional bias : Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ) :hostility score, attribution score, aggression score
for social perception and knowledge : interpretation score - with and without index, comprehension score ( PerSo )
for empathy : Empathy quotient (EQ)
for self assessment : Self - assessment of social cognition ( ACSo ): total score and scores per processes; only social cognitive measures
Allocation: Non-Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Screening
Keywords: schizophrenia