Virtual reality insights into schizophrenic patients’ way to interpret an Avatar's help

Abstract

With regards to the neurocognitive deficits and cognitive bias of schizophrenic disorders, it may be hypothesized that these patients suffer a deficit in recognizing helping intentions in others. To investigate help recognition, new technologies allowing to control an interaction with virtual affective agents were used with an adaptation of a previously described card-guessing paradigm (project COMPARSE ANR-11-EMCO-0007). We investigated whether the same game proposed successively by two virtual agents asking either empathetic (i.e. on the subject's feelings) or non-empathetic (i.e. on technical aspects of the game) questions to the participant would elicit different interpretations on their intentions. Dependent variables consisted of monetary allocation to the virtual agent, of questionnaires assessing the agent's help, interest, attention, etc. A group of 20 individuals with schizophrenia and one of 20 healthy controls, matched on gender, with comparable age, estimated verbal-IQ and educational level were recruited. The healthy subjects’ ratings of the virtual agent's behavior demonstrated that they interpreted empathetic questioning as helping and rewarded it positively with an increased monetary allocation. Schizophrenic patients had a qualitatively reduced perception of the differences between the two agents. Only the rating concerning the “interest/attention” of the agent toward them exhibited medium effect size when contrasting conditions. Hypothetically, schizophrenic patients take into account the fact they are the object of another's attention, but may fail to infer the intentional meaning and to provide an increased monetary allocation.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.