Negative and Neutral Valences of Affective Theory of Mind are More Impaired than Positive Valence in Clinically Stable Schizophrenia Patients

OBJECTIVE: People with schizophrenia show impairment in social cognition, such as emotion recognition and theory of mind. The current study aims to compare the ability of clinically stable schizophrenia patients to decode the positive, negative and neutral affective mental state of others with educational match-paired normal control. METHODS: 50 people with schizophrenia and 50 matched controls were compared on the positive, negative and neutral emotional valence of affective theory of mind using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Tests. RESULTS: The results showed that people with schizophrenia performed worse in negative and neutral emotional valence than normal controls; however, no significant differences in decoding positive valence were found. CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that there is variability in the performance of affective theory of mind according to emotion valence; the impairments seem to be specific to only negative and neutral emotions, but not positive ones.