The Narrative of Emotions Task: A psychometric study of social cognition and social functioning in individuals with schizophrenia

Public Deposited

Analytics

Last Modified

Creator

Buck, Benjamin Edwards
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience

Abstract

Social cognitive deficits in schizophrenia are well documented and related to functional outcome. Current social cognition measures are often not psychometrically validated, too heterogeneous for standardization, and focus principally on one domain of social cognition rather than the simultaneous activation of multiple domains. Also, few if any allow for personalization of stimuli and interpretation of personally evocative events. An alternative methodology that addresses these limitations is the analysis of personal narratives. The present study creates and evaluates the psychometric properties of a measure of emotional narratives potentially indicative of social cognition skills called the Narrative of Emotions Task (NET). The NET was used to assess the performance of 50 participants with a diagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum disorders and 50 nonclinical controls. Overall, the NET's psychometric properties justify further use of narrative methods of social cognition assessment in this population.

Date of publication