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Understanding Minds and Understanding Communicated Meanings in Schizophrenia
Author(s) -
Langdon Robyn,
Davies Martin,
Coltheart Max
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0017.00189
Subject(s) - irony , theory of mind , psychology , task (project management) , comprehension , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , cognitive psychology , literal (mathematical logic) , metaphor , reading (process) , literal and figurative language , deception , reading comprehension , cognition , linguistics , social psychology , neuroscience , philosophy , psychiatry , management , economics
The work reported in this paper investigated the putative functional dependence of pragmatic language skills on general mind‐reading capacity by testing theory‐of‐mind abilities and understanding of non‐literal speech in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy controls. Patients showed difficulties with inferring mental states on a false‐belief picture‐sequencing task and with understanding metaphors and irony on a story‐comprehension task. These difficulties were independent of low verbal IQ and a more generalised problem inhibiting prepotent information. Understanding of metaphors and understanding of irony made significant and independent contributions to discriminating patients from controls, suggesting that metaphor and irony make distinct pragmatic demands.