Social cognition and familial risk in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder: Effects of schizotypic and cyclotypic traits

Current study aims to investigate the schizotypic and cyclothypic traits effect on social cognition in relatives of schizophrenia, bipolar and healthy controls. The study was conducted in Dokuz Eylül University and consisted of totally 109 participants, 31 relatives of schizophrenia (FHRP), 43 relatives of bipolar disorder (FHRB) and 35 healthy controls (HC). Participants are completed a social cognitive battery where the emotion Recognition, theory of mind, social perception, social knowledge, and attributional style domains were assessed along with self-report questionnaires measured schizotypal and cyclothymic traits with Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ), TEMPS-A, Behavioral Inhibition/Activation Systems Test (BISBAS), Barratt Impulsivity Scale (BIS) and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). As a result of the analysis, although a partially diminished performance was observed for FHRB group in the areas of social cognition, impairments were found in various areas in the FHRP group. These impairments yielded more significant results in the verbal ToM test, social perception, and emotion recognition tests. Considering the temperament characteristics, it was shown that the FHRP group was more suspicious (p = 0.015), depressive (p = 0.008), cyclothymic (p = 0.020) and anxious (p = 0.023), but these differences were not observed for FHRB. When we look at these scale scores and social cognition effects in general, it was shown that the FHRP group was the group with the worst social cognition performance and the most temperamental characteristics, followed by the FHRB group with a moderate dysfunction. In summary, relatives of schizophrenia were found to be more at risk for accumulation of temperamental traits and social cognition impairments compared to bipolar relatives. Bipolar relatives showed a more moderate course of deterioration, but this deterioration was not sufficient to develop early detection markers for relatives. This study needs to be supported by other studies conducted in relatives and studies evaluating the effects of neurocognitive performance on social cognitive performance