Assessing Social Affiliative Behavior: A Comparison of in Vivo and Video Tasks

Social affiliation, or engagement in positive social interactions, is often profoundly impaired in individuals with schizophrenia. Valid measures of social affiliation are needed to understand these impairments and their symptom and functional correlates; however, such measures are limited and have not been validated. This pilot study evaluated one such measure-the video-based Social Affiliation Interaction Task (SAIT)-and a novel in vivo behavioral measure, the Affiliative Conversation Task (ACT). Twenty participants with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (SZ) and 35 nonpsychiatric controls (CT) completed both tasks and measures of negative symptoms and functioning. We explored group differences in social affiliation skills; convergent validity between social affiliation skill ratings from the two tasks; and concurrent validity with social affiliation skill ratings, negative symptoms, and functioning. SZ evidenced lower affiliation skill ratings than CT on the video SAIT, but not on the ACT, and the tasks displayed moderate convergent validity for affiliation skill ratings. Less affiliation skill in the SAIT was correlated with more negative symptoms and less functioning in the SZ group with medium effects, though the results were not significant. Findings suggest that the SAIT may be more sensitive to individual differences in skill level. Future research should continue to examine the SAIT for use in measuring affiliation skills.