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“Background. Interpersonal communication problems are common among persons with schizophrenia and may be linked, in part, to deficits in theory of mind (ToM), the ability to accurately perceive the attitudes, beliefs and intentions of others. Particular difficulties might be expected in the processing of counterfactual information such as sarcasm or lies.

Method. The present study included 50 schizophrenia or schizo-affective out-patients and 44 demographically comparable healthy adults who were administered Part III of The Awareness

of Social Inference Test (TASIT; a measure assessing comprehension of sarcasm Versus lies) as well as measures of positive and negative symptoms and community functioning.

Results. TASIT data were analyzed using a 2 (group: patients versus healthy adults) x 2 (condition: GW4064 mw sarcasm versus lie) repeated-measures ANOVA. The results show significant effects for group, condition, and the group x condition interaction. Compared to controls, patients performed significantly

worse on sarcasm but not lie scenes. Within-group contrasts showed that patients performed significantly worse on sarcasm versus lie scenes; controls performed comparably on both. In patients, performance on TASIT showed a significant correlation with positive, but not negative, symptoms. The group and interaction effects remained

significant when rerun with a subset of patients with low-level positive symptoms. selleck during The findings for a relationship between TASIT performance and community functioning were essentially negative.

Conclusions. The findings replicate a prior demonstration of difficulty in the comprehension of sarcasm using a different test, but are not consistent with previous studies showing global ToM deficits in schizophrenia.”
“Boolean relations, such as and, or, and not, are a fundamental way to create new concepts out of old. Classic psychological studies showed that such concepts differed in how difficult they were to learn, but did not explain the source of these differences. Recent theories have reinvigorated the field with explanations ranging from the complexity of minimal descriptions of a concept to the relative invariance of its different instances. We review these theories and argue that the simplest explanation the number of mental models required to represent a concept provides a powerful account. However, no existing theory explains the process in full, such as how individuals spontaneously describe concepts.”
“Evidence suggests that the lateral septum (LS) and the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) play opposing roles in the modulation of fear and anxiety.