Goal-directed behaviors in patients with schizophrenia: Concept relevance and updated model

Goal-directed behaviors are formulated to pursue a given objective by constructing a plan and selecting actions that lead to the intended goal, either immediately or over an extended period. This concept is important to the study of human behavior because of its involvement in the majority of complex or novel situations that an individual may encounter, regardless of the cognitive, affective, or social abilities required. In this paper, we aim to demonstrate the relevance of goal-directed behaviors to our understanding of the cognitive deficits and other symptoms associated with schizophrenia. A systematic analysis of this relation may allow us to develop integrative hypotheses regarding positive, negative, and disorganized symptoms of schizophrenia rather than consider them to be distinct issues. In this article, we review previous studies of goal-directed actions in patients with schizophrenia in order to clarify the relevant concepts and provide a theoretical basis for the integration of existing results. Based on available theoretical models and data, we propose an updated model to facilitate further investigation of schizophrenia-related impairments in goal-directed behaviors.