Gender Differences in Social Cognition in Patients With Schizophrenia of Recent Diagnosis and Healthy Controls Subjects
Condition: Women With Recent Diagnosis of Schizophrenia; Men With Recent Diagnosis of Schizophrenia; Healthy Women; Healthy Men
MeSH terms: Disease; Schizophrenia
Study type: Observational

Summary: 
      Individuals with schizophrenia have important and persistent deficits in multiple
      neurocognitive domains as well as in the Social Cognition (SC). SC refers to the mental
      operations underlying social behavior, and it is understood as a multidimensional construct
      that comprises emotional processing (EP), social perspective and knowledge, attributional
      bias and theory of mind (ToM) or mentalizing. Mentalizing and EP skills have been the two
      most studied subdomains of SC in schizophrenia. Both domains have been found to be impaired
      in chronic schizophrenia patients as well as in patients in early stages of the illness. In
      this context, although negative symptoms may play and important role, females seem to perform
      better than males in ToM and EP tasks, suggesting the presence of gender differences in the
      SC skills in patients with schizophrenia. However, to our knowledge, there are no studies
      that have explored the gender-related differences between cognitive and affective ToM and its
      relationship with the EP performance in schizophrenia patients of recent diagnosis comparing
      with healthy subjects.

      In this line, the main objective of this project is to analyze the influence of gender in the
      cognitive and affective ToM abilities, in a group of patients with schizophrenia in early
      stages of the illness comparing with healthy subjects. Secondarily, this study pretends to
      explore the association between EP skills and affective ToM tasks performance in males and
      females with and without recent diagnosis of schizophrenia.
    

Detailed description: 
      50 patients (25 men and 25 women) will be recruited to participate in the study. Diagnosis of
      schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder will be obtained through the medical records of
      each patient, and confirmed with the administration of the Structured Clinical Interview for
      DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I) (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) by an expert
      psychiatrist. The same professional will confirm the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and
      administrate and correct the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANNS) of all patients. An
      expert neuropsychologist will administrate and correct the the abbreviated form of the
      Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III) and the ToM and EP tasks.

      In a second phase, a total of 50 healthy people (25 men and 25 women), matched according to
      age and years of schooling with the previous group, will be recruited. An expert
      neuropsychologist will confirm the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and administrate and
      correct the Vocabulary subtests of the WAIS-III and ToM and EP tasks.

      All of them will be informed about the characteristics of the study before participating, and
      will sign an informed consent approved by the ethical committee of the hospital. The subjects
      will participate voluntarily.

      4 groups ANOVAs will be performed for studying differences in affective and cognitive ToM
      between the groups (1-Women With Recent Diagnosis of Schizophrenia; 2-Men With Recent
      Diagnosis of Schizophrenia; 3-Healthy Women; 4-Healthy Men). Linear regression models will be
      performed for exploring the relationship between gender, negative symptoms (only in the
      schizophrenia sample) and EP (independents variables) in affective ToM (dependent variable).
    

Intervention name(s): GENDER
Intervention type(s): Other
Observational model: Case-Control
Time perspective: Cross-Sectional
Sampling method: Non-Probability Sample
Study population: 
        Females and males with and without schizophrenia of recent diagnosis.