Poor ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) is characteristic of people with schizophrenia and predicts these individuals’ social deficits. ToM impairment is also seen in unaffected relatives of people with schizophrenia and at early stages of psychotic illness. Little is known, however, of ToM in young people with ‘at-risk mental states’ (ARMS). The method is to assess ToM and its associations with social functioning in young people meeting ARMS criteria. Young people (aged 13-25yrs) were recruited from three sites (Newcastle, Orange, Sydney) to take part in the ‘MinT’ study.
88 participants meeting ‘at-risk’ criteria according to the ‘Comprehensive Assessment of At Risk Mental State’ (CAARMS) and 29 healthy controls completed three ToM tasks: a False-Belief Picture Sequencing Task (FB-PST), Hinting Task and Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RMET). Functioning was assessed using Cornblatt et al.’s (2007) Social and Role Functioning Scales.
The ‘at-risk’ group performed more poorly than the controls on the FB-PST and Hinting Task but not on the RMET. The group differences only reached significance, however, in participants aged 18yrs or younger. Performances on the FB-PST and Hinting Tasks correlated significantly with measures of social and role functioning in the at-risk group.
At-risk young people show poor ToM ability on some tasks. ToM impairments in this group associate with their levels of functioning. The ToM tasks that reveal impairments require subjects to, not only infer the contents of others’ mental states, but also reason about behaviour based on those inferences.
