Do patients with schizophrenia have a general or specific deficit in the perception of social threat? A meta-analytic study

This study investigates whether social cognitive deficits found in patients with schizophrenia are specific to social threat stimuli, and whether the deficits increase across the delusion spectrum from a subclinical sample to clinical manifestation. The authors presented the meta-analytic review of the published literature on social threat perception performance in three kinds of group comparisons: a subclinical group and a healthy control group, a schizophrenia group and a healthy control group, and a schizophrenia with delusion symptoms group and a healthy control group. The meta-analysis of 20 studies yielded six weighted effect sizes. The largest differences were found between the schizophrenia with delusion group and the healthy controls in both the threat and non-threat conditions. No differences were found between the effect sizes in the threat-related condition and the non-threat condition in any of the three group comparisons. Age was found to be significantly correlated with the effect sizes. The performance differences in both the threat and non-threat conditions reflect a generalized performance deficit, rather than a specific deficit, in the perception of social threat stimuli among patients with schizophrenia.