Persons with first episode psychosis have distinct profiles of social cognition and metacognition

Abstract

Subjects with first-episode psychosis experience substantial deficits in social cognition and metacognition. Although previous studies have investigated the role of profiles of individuals in social cognition and metacognition in chronic schizophrenia, profiling subjects with first-episode psychosis in both domains remains to be investigated. We used latent profile analysis to derive profiles of the abilities in 174 persons with first-episode psychosis using the Beck’s Cognitive Insight Scale, the Faces Test, the Hinting Task, the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire, and the Beads Task. Participants received a clinical assessment and a neuropsychological assessment. The best-fitting model was selected according to the Bayesian information criterion (BIC). We assessed the importance of the variables via a classification tree (CART). We derived three clusters with distinct profiles. The first profile (33.3%) comprised individuals with low social cognition. The second profile (60.9%) comprised individuals that had more proneness to present jumping to conclusions. The third profile (5.7%) presented a heterogeneous profile of metacognitive deficits. Persons with lower social cognition presented worse clinical and neuropsychological features than cluster 2 and cluster 3. Cluster 3 presented significantly worst functioning. Our results suggest that individuals with FEP present distinct profiles that concur with specific clinical, neuropsychological, and functional challenges. Each subgroup may benefit from different interventions.