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Published Online: 1 March 2013

Social and Nonsocial Cognition in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia: Relative Levels of Impairment

Abstract

Objective

This study aimed to determine the relative extent of impairment in social and nonsocial cognitive domains in patients with bipolar disorder compared with schizophrenia patients and healthy comparison subjects.

Methods

Sixty-eight clinically stable outpatients with bipolar disorder, 38 clinically stable outpatients with schizophrenia, and 36 healthy comparison subjects completed a range of social (facial affect perception, emotional regulation, empathic accuracy, mental state attribution, and self-referential memory) and nonsocial (speed of processing, attention/vigilance, working memory, verbal memory, visual memory, and reasoning/problem solving) cognitive tasks.

Results

For each social cognitive task, patients with bipolar disorder did not differ significantly from comparison subjects, and both groups performed better than schizophrenia patients. Within the bipolar group, clinical features and medication status were not related to social cognitive performance. Bipolar patients showed performance patterns across tasks (i.e., profiles) that were similar to those of comparison subjects on both social and nonsocial cognitive domains, whereas both groups differed from schizophrenia patients for both domains. Regarding relative impairment across the two cognitive domains, results revealed a significant group-by-domain interaction in which bipolar patients showed less impaired social than nonsocial cognition, while schizophrenia patients showed the opposite pattern.

Conclusions

Bipolar patients showed less impairment on social relative to nonsocial cognitive performance, whereas schizophrenia patients showed more impairment on social relative to nonsocial cognitive performance. These results suggest that these two cognitive domains play different roles in bipolar disorder compared with in schizophrenia.

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Information & Authors

Information

Published In

Go to American Journal of Psychiatry
Go to American Journal of Psychiatry
American Journal of Psychiatry
Pages: 334 - 341
PubMed: 23450289

History

Received: 13 April 2012
Revision received: 5 July 2012
Revision received: 14 August 2012
Accepted: 30 August 2012
Published online: 1 March 2013
Published in print: March 2013

Authors

Details

Junghee Lee, Ph.D.
From the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles; Veterans Affairs Desert Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles; Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.; Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center, Institute of Living, Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Conn.; and the Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York.
Lori Altshuler, M.D.
From the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles; Veterans Affairs Desert Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles; Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.; Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center, Institute of Living, Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Conn.; and the Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York.
David C. Glahn, Ph.D.
From the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles; Veterans Affairs Desert Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles; Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.; Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center, Institute of Living, Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Conn.; and the Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York.
David J. Miklowitz, Ph.D.
From the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles; Veterans Affairs Desert Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles; Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.; Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center, Institute of Living, Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Conn.; and the Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York.
Kevin Ochsner, Ph.D.
From the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles; Veterans Affairs Desert Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles; Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.; Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center, Institute of Living, Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Conn.; and the Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York.
Michael F. Green, Ph.D.
From the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles; Veterans Affairs Desert Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Los Angeles; Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.; Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center, Institute of Living, Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Conn.; and the Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York.

Notes

Address correspondence to Dr. Lee ([email protected]).

Funding Information

Dr. Altshuler has received advisory board honoraria from Sepracor and has served as a consultant to Eli Lilly. Dr. Miklowitz has received speakers’ fees from GlaxoSmithKline and book royalties from Guilford Press and John Wiley & Sons. Dr. Green has served as a consultant to Abbott Laboratories, Amgen, and Shire. All other authors report no financial relationships with commercial interests.
Supplementary Material
Supported by NIMH grants MH-043292 and MH-089634 (principal investigator, Michael F. Green, Ph.D.).

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