Can Social Functioning in Schizophrenia Be Improved through Targeted Social Cognitive Intervention?

Abstract EN

Efforts to use cognitive remediation in psychosocial intervention for schizophrenia have increasingly incorporated social cognition as a treatment target.

A distinction can be made in this work between “broad-based” interventions, which integrate social cognitive training within a multicomponent suite of intervention techniques and “targeted” interventions; which aim to enhance social cognition alone.

Targeted interventions have the potential advantage of being more efficient than broad-based interventions; however, they also face difficult challenges.

In particular, targeted interventions may be less likely to achieve maintenance and generalization of gains made in treatment.

A novel potential solution to this problem is described which draws on the social psychological literature on social cognition.