Schizophrenia and perspective taking

A comparison of schizophrenic and transient psychotic disorder patients

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the ability of schizophrenic patients to take another person's perspective. Two perspective taking tasks were examined: perceptual and affective perspective taking. Three groups participated in the study: 22 schizophrenics, 11 transient psychotic disorder [TPD] patients, and 20 normal students. Both schizophrenic and TPD patients scored significantly lower in the both perspective taking tasks than the normal controls. The affective perspective taking scores of the two patients groups were compared with those of six year-old children. Although schizophrenic and TPD patients were thought to be able to infer another's affective state correctly, they sometimes made errors in the task, because they failed to control for their own affect. Thus, their response tendency was different from the normal children of the age. The two patients groups appeared to have a common specific difficulty in inferring another's emotions.