Social cognition and schizophrenia

Dysfunctions in social interactions and social isolation are common characteristics of mental illness and schizophrenia is not an exception. This is the reason for recent growing intercst in new theoretical approaches to schizophrenia and social cognition is one of those approaches. Also social cognition has been identified as one of the areas of MATRICS neurocognititive battery developed to be used for testing new drugs for therapy of schizophrenia. Theoretical part of this study is a brief overview of some of the approaches and areas oť social cognition relative to schizophrenia. Practical part is an attempt to create a method to measure social cognition. The biggest contribution of social cognition to the concept of schizophrenia is the fact that it perceives complex difficulties seen in schizophreoia as manifestations of several simple deficits in different areas, which can be good targets of both therapeutic procedures and empirical research. The attempt to create a psychological test was based on a "group game'' which we have transformed into a "pencil-paper" method. Tbc method was then examined in both clinical aod non-clinical settings and some valuable characteristics of the test have been obtained. These seem to be promising for the test to become a possible method of measuring social cognition...