Zhang TH, et al. – The study aimed to determine the relationship between neurocognition and the theory of mind (ToM) abilities during the progression of psychosis. The findings from the present study suggested that the relationship between ToM abilities and neurocognition might be increased during the progression of the condition, particularly for people who convert to psychosis after a short period.

Methods

• For this study, eighty-three people were included with attenuated psychosis syndrome (APS), from which twenty-six converted to psychosis (converters) after a follow up period of 18 months.
• At baseline, comprehensive cognitive tests (including MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery, Faux-Pas Task, and Reading-Mind-in-Eyes Tasks) were administered.  
• A structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was directed to estimate the impacts of neurocognition on the ToM functioning in both APS and healthy controls (HC) datasets.

Results

• The results of this study showed that the converters and non-converters groups differed significantly on several domains of cognitive performance at baseline.  
• The SEM analysis showed that the path from neurocognition to ToM was statistically significant in the APS dataset (p < 0.001).
• The result of the same analysis was not significant (p = 0.117) in the HC dataset.
• According to the findings obtained, positive correlations between neurocognition and ToM were seen, and the most obvious correlations were found in the converters group compared with the non-converters group (p = 0.064) and compared with the HC group (p = 0.002).