You looking at me?: Interpreting social cues in schizophrenia
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Deficits in the perception of social cues are common in schizophrenia and predict functional outcome. While effective communication depends on deciphering both verbal and non-verbal features, work on non-verbal communication in the disorder is scarce. METHOD: This behavioural study of 29 individuals with schizophrenia and 25 demographically matched controls used silent video-clips to examine gestural identification, its contextual modulation and related metacognitive representations. RESULTS: In accord with our principal hypothesis, we observed that individuals with schizophrenia exhibited a preserved ability to identify archetypal gestures and did not differentially infer communicative intent from incidental movements. However, patients were more likely than controls to perceive gestures as self-referential when confirmatory evidence was ambiguous. Furthermore, the severity of their current hallucinatory experience inversely predicted their confidence ratings associated with these self-referential judgements. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest a deficit in the contextual refinement of social-cue processing in schizophrenia that is potentially attributable to impaired monitoring of a mirror mechanism underlying intentional judgements, or to an incomplete semantic representation of gestural actions. Non-verbal communication may be improved in patients through psychotherapeutic interventions that include performance and perception of gestures in group interactions.
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Individuals with schizophrenia are more likely to perceive ambiguous communication signals as self-referred.
“also showing that individuals with SCZ are more likely to perceive ambiguous communication signals as self-referred (White et al., 2016).”
From Predictive coding in neuropsychiatric disorders: a systematic transdiagnostic review. (2025) · cites this paper as White et al., 2016
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Biological motion sensitivity, but not interpersonal predictive coding is impaired in schizophrenia
Okruszek, Ł., Piejka, A., Wysokiński, A., Szczepocka, E., & Manera, V. (2018) · Journal of Abnormal Psychology · doi:10.1037/abn0000335 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
Predictive coding in neuropsychiatric disorders: a systematic transdiagnostic review.
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“The literature supports this tendency, also showing that individuals with SCZ are more likely to perceive ambiguous communication signals as self-referred (White et al., 2016).”
- Authors
- White, T. P., Borgan, F., Ralley, O., & Shergill, S. S.
- Affiliations
- University of Birmingham (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Shergill, S. S.
- Venue
- Psychological Medicine
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2015-09-04
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 149-160
- ISSN
- 0033-2917 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-8978
- OpenAlex
- W2111815604
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 75
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 3.78
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Medicine (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
- Maudsley Charity
- NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust/Institute of Cancer Research
- National Institutes of Health
- Medical Research Council
- National Institute of Mental Health
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Schizophrenia research and treatment
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Mental Health and Psychiatry
- Keywords
- schizophrenia, social cue processing, nonverbal communication, gesture perception, metacognition, contextual modulation, hallucinations, mirror mechanism, communicative intention, functional outcome
- MeSH terms
- Metacognition, Adult, Cues, Female, Gestures, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia, Social Perception
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