Situational familiarity and feature recognition in schizophrenia

Research has shown that schizophrenia patients are less able to identify a situation's abstract features (goals) than its concrete features (actions). However, it has been unclear whether this differential deficit represents a cognitive dysfunction or a lack of familiarity with many situations because of impoverished social experiences. Twenty-nine inpatients with DSM-III-R diagnosis of schizophrenia completed the Situational Feature Recognition Test, Version 2 (SFRT-2). The SFRT-2 included familiar and unfamiliar situations of which subjects were asked to identify characteristic goals and actions. A 2 x 2 x 2 analysis of variance (group by feature abstraction by situational familiarity) found a significant three-way interaction. Post-hoc analyses suggested that patients were better able to recognize concrete features in familiar situations. Differences in discriminating power of the four conditions of the SFRT-2 had been diminished on standardization and cross-validation groups. Therefore, the differential deficits shown by the patient sample probably do not represent psychometric confound. Implications for remediation of social cognitive deficits are discussed.