Mentalizing in a movie for the assessment of social cognition (MASC): the validation in a taiwanese sample.

BACKGROUND: The present study evaluated the psychometrics properties of a sensitive video-based test used in the evaluation of mentalizing skills, that is, the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition-Taiwanese version (MASC-TW). METHODS: We recruited two independent samples of nonclinical participants (N = 167) and adult patients with schizophrenia (N = 41). The MASC-TW and two other social cognition measures, namely the Chinese version of Theory of Mind task (ToM) and the Taiwanese version of the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2 (DANAV-TW-2), and an executive function measure of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), were administered to both groups. RESULTS: The MASC proved to be a reliable measure of mentalizing capacity, high Cronbach's α value of 0.87. The intraclass correlation coefficient for the MASC-TW total correct scores was 0.85 across three waves of data collection. Across the entire sample, the scores on the MASC-TW were significantly correlated with verbal and nonverbal scores for the ToM task and recognition of facial and prosodic emotion on the DANAV-TW-2. Both executive function and emotion recognition emerged as noteworthy predictors of mentalizing, indicating that these two variables might play crucial roles in the development of mentalizing capacities. Finally, a receiver operating characteristic analysis revealed that in patients with schizophrenia, the MASC was the most accurate discriminator of diagnostic groups, highlighting the validity of the MASC. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the MASC-TW is an ecologically valid and useful tool for assessing mentalizing abilities in a Taiwanese population.

Social cognitive deficit is associated with visuomotor coordination impairment and dopamine transporter availability in euthymic bipolar disorder.

BACKGROUND: Extensive evidence has suggested functional connections between co-occurring visuomotor and social cognitive deficits in neuropsychiatric disorders; however, such association has not been studied in bipolar disorder (BD). We aimed to investigate the relationship between visuomotor coordination and social cognition in the euthymic stage of BD (euBD). Given the shared neurobiological underpinnings involving the dopaminergic system and corticostriatal circuitry, we hypothesized a positive correlation between social cognition and visuomotor coordination in euBD patients. METHODS: 40 euBD patients and 59 healthy control (HC) participants underwent evaluation of social (Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy 2-Taiwan version (DANVA-2-TW)), non-social cognitive function and visuomotor coordination. A subgroup of participants completed single-photon emission computed tomography for striatal dopamine transporter (DAT) availability assessment. RESULTS: EuBD patients showed impaired nonverbal emotion recognition (ps ≤ 0.033) and poorer visuomotor coordination (ps < 0.003) compared to HC, with a positive correlation between these two abilities (r = 0.55, p < 0.01). However, after considering potential confounding factors, instead of visuomotor coordination, striatal DAT availability was a unique predictor of emotion recognition accuracy in euBD (beta = 0.33, p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: Our study result supported a functional association between social cognition and visuomotor coordination in euBD, with striatal dopaminergic dysfunction emerged as a crucial contributing factor in their interrelation.

Associations of emotion recognition, loneliness, and social functioning in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder.

Emotion recognition deficit is related to impaired community functioning. Loneliness is also associated with impaired social performance. However, the way in which emotion recognition and loneliness may contribute to social functioning remains unclear in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder. We aimed to examine emotion recognition ability in Han Chinese euBD patients relative to healthy controls (HCs) and to investigate the associations between emotion recognition, loneliness, and social functioning. Thirty-nine HCs and 46 euthymic BD patients completed an emotion recognition task and nonsocial cognitive measures related to executive function and attention. The UCLA loneliness scale and Social Performance Scale were administered to evaluate psychological loneliness and social functioning, respectively. We observed lower emotion recognition accuracy, higher loneliness, and poorer social functioning in the BD patients after adjustment for demographic data. Loneliness was negatively associated with global social functioning in both the BD and HC groups. Higher loneliness and lower emotion recognition accuracy were associated with poorer social functioning in euthymic BD in different subdomains. Our study confirmed a subtle impairment of emotion recognition ability in euthymic BD. Loneliness impacts globally on social functioning, while emotion recognition ability may affect specific subdomains of social functioning in euthymic BD. Alleviation of loneliness and enhancement of social cognition might improve social functioning in BD patients.

The facilitating role of dispositional mindfulness in the process of posttraumatic growth: A prospective investigation.

OBJECTIVE: Traumatic events can lead not only to psychological distress but also to posttraumatic growth (PTG). As trauma challenge one's fundamental assumptions, traumatized individuals may initially experience intrusive rumination. However, these challenged assumptions could facilitate further cognitive processing of trauma (i.e., deliberate rumination), which in turn fosters PTG. Adaptive cognitive processes, such as reduced rumination, have been linked to dispositional mindfulness. Thus, the current study aimed to investigate the potential role of dispositional mindfulness in the process of PTG. METHOD: A 3-wave longitudinal design was employed to capture temporal changes in PTG. At the initial assessment (time 1), 259 traumatized individuals were assessed with regard to their trauma experiences, core belief challenge, intrusive and deliberate rumination, posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), PTG, and dispositional mindfulness. The surveys were repeated after 1 month (time 2) and 7 months (time 3). RESULTS: Over time, the first indirect association of core belief challenge was increased PTG through recent intrusive and deliberate rumination, and the second indirect association of core belief challenge was decreased PTG through recent intrusive rumination and PTSS. In addition, dispositional mindfulness significantly moderated these 2 indirect associations. Individuals with a medium level of mindfulness at time 1 had lower levels of rumination and PTSS at time 3 compared to individuals with a low level of mindfulness. CONCLUSIONS: In the face of trauma, dispositional mindfulness promotes resilience through a subsequent reduction in rumination and PTSS. Our results highlight the protective role of dispositional mindfulness in long-term outcomes of trauma exposure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Association of visual motor processing and social cognition in schizophrenia.

Patients with schizophrenia have difficulties in social cognitive domains including emotion recognition and mentalization, and in sensorimotor processing and learning. The relationship between social cognitive deficits and sensorimotor function in patients with schizophrenia remains largely unexplored. With the hypothesis that impaired visual motor processing may decelerate information processing and subsequently affects various domains of social cognition, we examined the association of nonverbal emotion recognition, mentalization, and visual motor processing in schizophrenia. The study examined mentalization using the verbal subset of the Chinese version of Theory of Mind (CToM) Task, an equivalent task of the Faux Pas Test; emotion recognition using the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy 2-Taiwan version (DANVA-2-TW), and visual motor processing using a joystick tracking task controlled for basic motor function in 34 individuals with chronic schizophrenia in the community and 42 healthy controls. Patients with schizophrenia had significantly worse performance than healthy controls in social cognition, including facial, prosodic emotion recognition, and mentalization. Visual motor processing was also significantly worse in patients with schizophrenia. Only in patients with schizophrenia, both emotion recognition (mainly in prosodic modality, happy, and sad emotions) and mentalization were positively associated with their learning capacity of visual motor processing. These findings suggest a prospective role of sensorimotor function in their social cognitive deficits. Despite that the underlying neural mechanism needs further research, our findings may provide a new direction for restoration of social cognitive function in schizophrenia by enhancing visual motor processing ability.

Multidirectional Pathways between Attachment, Mentalizing, and Posttraumatic Stress Symptomatology in the Context of Childhood Trauma.

INTRODUCTION: Exposure to traumatic stressful events in childhood is an important risk factor for the development of posttraumatic symptomatology. From a mentalization-based developmental perspective, childhood adversity can affect attachment in children and may result in insecure attachment and impaired mentalizing abilities, which increase the lifetime risk for psychopathology. The present cross-sectional study examined the potential mediating role of attachment insecurity and impaired mentalizing on the relationship between childhood trauma and posttraumatic symptomatology. METHOD: Adults who had experienced childhood neglect and abuse (n = 295, 184 patients with personality disorder and 111 community controls) completed self-report measures of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, dissociative experiences, adult attachment insecurity, and mentalizing. RESULTS: Structural equation modelling results revealed that attachment insecurity together with lower mentalizing mediated the link between childhood trauma and PTSD symptoms, and lower mentalizing mediated the link between childhood trauma and dissociative experiences. CONCLUSION: The findings show that attachment insecurity and lower mentalizing play significant mediating roles in the reporting of posttraumatic symptomatology among survivors of childhood abuse and neglect, with treatment implications for mentalization-based therapy as beneficial for individuals with a history of childhood trauma.

Attachment avoidance and fearful prosodic emotion recognition predict depression maintenance.

Insecure attachment cognitions, emotion recognition biases, and their interaction are important contributors to depression susceptibility. The present study, with a prospective longitudinal design, investigated the role of negative emotion recognition in moderating the linkage from insecure attachment cognitions to elevated depressive symptoms. A sample of 96 depression-prone individuals completed measures for attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, depression symptom severity, and a computerized facial and prosodic emotion recognition task twice with a four-week interval. Results revealed that the interaction between attachment avoidance and fearful prosodic emotion recognition significantly predicted subsequent depressive symptoms. More specifically, greater attachment avoidance with lower accuracy of fearful prosodic emotions at baseline predicted an increase of depressive symptoms over four-week interval. However, no moderating role of emotion recognition in the linkage from attachment anxiety to depression persistence was noted. The present study demonstrates that attachment avoidance and negative emotion recognition may together contribute to the maintenance of depression. The findings may be pertinent to attachment avoidance-related deactivating strategy that appears to be a specific cultural forbearance way for emotion regulation in collectivistic societies. Potential applications and future research are then suggested.

Facial and prosodic emotion recognition in social anxiety disorder.

INTRODUCTION: Patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) have a cognitive preference to negatively evaluate emotional information. In particular, the preferential biases in prosodic emotion recognition in SAD have been much less explored. The present study aims to investigate whether SAD patients retain negative evaluation biases across visual and auditory modalities when given sufficient response time to recognise emotions. METHODS: Thirty-one SAD patients and 31 age- and gender-matched healthy participants completed a culturally suitable non-verbal emotion recognition task and received clinical assessments for social anxiety and depressive symptoms. A repeated measures analysis of variance was conducted to examine group differences in emotion recognition. RESULTS: Compared to healthy participants, SAD patients were significantly less accurate at recognising facial and prosodic emotions, and spent more time on emotion recognition. The differences were mainly driven by the lower accuracy and longer reaction times for recognising fearful emotions in SAD patients. Within the SAD patients, lower accuracy of sad face recognition was associated with higher severity of depressive and social anxiety symptoms, particularly with avoidance symptoms. CONCLUSION: These findings may represent a cross-modality pattern of avoidance in the later stage of identifying negative emotions in SAD. This pattern may be linked to clinical symptom severity.

Attachment Dimensions and Post-traumatic Symptoms Following Interpersonal Traumas versus Impersonal Traumas in Young Adults in Taiwan.

Greater risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is seen in individuals exposed to interpersonal traumatic events. Based on an attachment perspective, interpersonal trauma exposure may activate one's attachment insecurity system and disrupt affect, behaviour and interpersonal function, which may in turn create more difficulties to cope with interpersonal traumas and exacerbate PTSD symptomatology. The present study examined whether attachment anxiety relative to attachment avoidance would be a stronger predictor of greater PTSD symptoms following interpersonal traumas versus impersonal traumas in a Taiwanese sample. One hundred and sixty-two trauma-exposed Taiwanese young adults completed the measures of symptoms of depression, anxiety and PTSD, and attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance. In this Taiwanese study, higher attachment anxiety was observed in individuals who were exposed to interpersonal traumas. The interpersonal trauma group reported greater PTSD symptoms than did the impersonal trauma group. Specifically, after controlling for age, occurrence of trauma and distress of trauma, attachment anxiety, but not attachment avoidance, predicted more PTSD total severity and avoidance symptoms in the interpersonal trauma group. The findings may be pertinent to attachment anxiety-related hyperactivating strategies, as well as specific cultural values and a forbearance strategy applied to regulate traumatic distress in a collectivist society. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Facial and prosodic emotion recognition deficits associate with specific clusters of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Patients with schizophrenia perform significantly worse on emotion recognition tasks than healthy participants across several sensory modalities. Emotion recognition abilities are correlated with the severity of clinical symptoms, particularly negative symptoms. However, the relationships between specific deficits of emotion recognition across sensory modalities and the presentation of psychotic symptoms remain unclear. The current study aims to explore how emotion recognition ability across modalities and neurocognitive function correlate with clusters of psychotic symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. METHODS: 111 participants who met the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia and 70 healthy participants performed on a dual-modality emotion recognition task, the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy 2-Taiwan version (DANVA-2-TW), and selected subscales of WAIS-III. Of all, 92 patients received neurocognitive evaluations, including CPT and WCST. These patients also received the PANSS for clinical evaluation of symptomatology. RESULTS: The emotion recognition ability of patients with schizophrenia was significantly worse than healthy participants in both facial and vocal modalities, particularly fearful emotion. An inverse correlation was noted between PANSS total score and recognition accuracy for happy emotion. The difficulty of happy emotion recognition and earlier age of onset, together with the perseveration error in WCST predicted total PANSS score. Furthermore, accuracy of happy emotion and the age of onset were the only two significant predictors of delusion/hallucination. All the associations with happy emotion recognition primarily concerned happy prosody. DISCUSSION: Deficits in emotional processing in specific categories, i.e. in happy emotion, together with deficit in executive function, may reflect dysfunction of brain systems underlying severity of psychotic symptoms, in particular the positive dimension.