BACKGROUND: The study explored the relationship between the understanding of intention in veiled speech acts and the ability to reason inductively. METHODS: A total of 39 @entity1 with DSM-IV-defined @entity161 with no behavioural signs and 44 healthy @entity1 performed the Hinting Task, a measure of pragmatic language in which the speaker's intention must be inferred, and a measure of inductive reasoning (Aha! Sentences) in which the meaning of ambiguous nonsocial sentences had to be inferred. The @entity1 also completed measures of general intellectual ability, immediate memory for narrative and social problem-solving ability. RESULTS: A substantial correlation was found between performance on the inductive reasoning task and the Hinting Task in the sample of @entity1 with @entity161 . The same relationship was not seen in the normal control sample. The robust relationship between these two measures in this sample survived when the roles of immediate memory for narrative and intellectual ability were controlled for. Furthermore, the relationship was distinctly more compelling for the @entity1 who were currently ill compared to those in remission. CONCLUSION: These data suggest that @entity1 with @entity161 use a different strategy to infer the meaning behind pragmatic language than that used by normally functioning adults. It is suggested that a reliance on different, possibly less specialised, skills in this group to perform this simple social inference task underlies their deficient performance on this and other measures of social inference. The fact that the relationship between the tasks in @entity1 in remission is not as robust implies that the use of specialised skills to perform social inference tasks may be compromised most significantly during acute phases.

Inductive reasoning and the understanding of intention in XXXX .

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['people', 'patients', 'participants'] @entity161 :: ('MESH:D012559', 'Disease') :: ['schizophrenia']
@entity161 :: (MESH:D012559,Disease) :: ['schizophrenia']
