Theory of Mind - Zusammenhänge von affektiven und kognitiven Theory of Mind Fähigkeiten bei Patienten mit Schizophrenie
Thema und Zielsetzung Unter der Theory of Mind (ToM, Premack und Woodruff 1978) wird die Fähigkeit verstanden, sich selbst und anderen mentale Zustände zuschreiben zu können. Es handelt sich um einen Prozess der sozialen Kognition, der als relevanter Faktor zum Verständnis psychischer Störungen bei...
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Format: | Doctoral Thesis |
Language: | German |
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Philipps-Universität Marburg
2019
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Online Access: | PDF Full Text |
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Subject and Objectives Theory of Mind (ToM, Premack and Woodruff 1978) is the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others. It is the process of social cognition that contributes as a relevant factor to the understanding of mental disorders. There is empirical evidence for the presence of ToM impairment in patients suffering from schizophrenia. ToM abilities can be divided into various aspects, i.e. cognitive and affective ToM. Researchers have postulated that patients with schizophrenia show impairment in all aspects of ToM. However, the exact relationship between these different aspects of ToM and schizophrenia has not yet been adequately investigated. The aim of this dissertation project is to provide an explanation for the development and maintenance of schizophrenic disorders by measuring correlations between different aspects of ToM and symptoms of schizophrenia. It was tested, whether there are stage dependent and gender dependent differences in ToM abilities among patients suffering from schizophrenia compared to healthy subjects. Furthermore, cognitive ToM abilities were examined regarding possible correlations to symptoms of delusion and persecutory delusion. Methods 30 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and 19 healthy control subjects were compared in their ToM abilities in a cross-sectional study. Both groups completed a battery of four ToM tasks measuring their affective and cognitive ToM abilities. The tasks contained verbal, visual and video-based ToM measures. Further tests were used for the assessment of psychopathology and neuropsychological impairments. The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the remission criteria by Andreasen were applied to realize group comparisons within the sample of patients. Results The results revealed that patients suffering from schizophrenia showed a significantly worse performance in the affective ToM tasks compared to the healthy subjects. Control subjects outperformed patients in the acute phase ofillness and patients in remission. There were no significant between-group differences with regard to cognitive ToM performance. Furthermore, the results indicated that impairments in cognitive ToM abilities are associated with delusions. Patients with persecutory delusions were tested concerning the possibility of Hyper-ToM errors in cognitive ToM tasks. The group had no significant tendency to make over interpretative errors than both patients without persecutory delusions and controls. There was no gender-specific difference in both the patient group and control group, regarding affective and cognitive ToM abilities. Conclusion The findings of this study support the assumption that ToM impairments in schizophrenia represent a trait variable, which does not change in remission. The results suggest that patients with schizophrenia have less distinctive cognitive ToM impairments than affective ToM impairments. Furthermore, results indicate that deficits in cognitive ToM abilities influence the development and maintenance of delusions.