Relationships of cognitive distortions with neuropsychological functioning in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia
The study concerns the cognitive functioning of people suffering from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is one of the most severe mental illnesses. It usually begins at a young age, and its chronic course and strong influence on functioning often necessitate long-term treatment and rehabilitation.
Despite the dynamic development of pharmacotherapy over several decades, a large proportion of patients still experience unpleasant symptoms of the disease - delusions or hallucinations. The productive symptoms of schizophrenia have been the subject of research for many years. Scientists dealing with psychological concepts of psychotic symptoms point out that the cognitive distortions often observed in people suffering from schizophrenia may be a mechanism that triggers or maintains psychotic symptoms. The association of positive symptoms of schizophrenia with such cognitive distortions as: attribution errors (assigning blame for failure to other people), too hasty decision-making ("jumping to conclusions"), deficits in the theory of mind (difficulties in understanding the intentions and emotions of other people) has been shown.
Currently, more and more attention in schizophrenia is devoted to cognitive distortion, which consists in incorrectly assigning the source of information origin - source monitoring processes. The term source monitoring refers to the cognitive processes involved in attributing the origin of memories, knowledge, or beliefs. In everyday life, this ability plays a significant role and enables, among others, distinguishing whether an event really happened to us, or whether we just imagined it or whether someone told us about it. Disturbed source monitoring process can cause interpersonal conflicts or false memories. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying the above-mentioned difficulties. The extent to which the increased number of source monitoring errors and other cognitive distortions may be affected by neuropsychological deficits in attention, memory, and executive functions has not yet been determined.
The aim of the study is to find out if and how cognitive distortions are related to neuropsychological functioning (e.g. attention, direct memory, verbal memory, executive functions) in people diagnosed with schizophrenia. In order to answer the research question, a study was designed in which 80 people suffering from schizophrenia and 80 healthy people will participate. Participants will be subjected to tests to assess the severity of symptoms, neuropsychological assessment, experimental tasks assessing cognitive distortions and self-report questionnaires.
Establishing the relationship between cognitive distortions and neuropsychological functioning will allow to supplement the existing knowledge and may contribute to the creation of cognitive-behavioral therapeutic interventions aimed at reducing the cognitive distortions committed.