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Abstract: The aim of the present research is to perform a detailed and empirical investigation of schizophrenia patients’ deficits in recognizing and recovering a communicative failure. In particular, this paper investigates the role of Theory of Mind (ToM) and of the complexity of the mental representations involved in explaining patients’ deficits in recognizing and recovering different kinds of communicative failures, i.e. failure of the expressive act, failure of communicative meaning and failure of the communicative effect. Twenty-two patients with schizophrenia and an equal number of healthy controls took part in the experiment. The experimental protocol consisted of videotaped stories in which two agents interact, showing a communicative failure; the participants were asked to recognize and repair the observed failure. Some classical ToM tests (Sally and Ann, Modified Smarties and a selection of six Strange Stories) were also administered. Our results revealed a deficit in patients, when compared with healthy controls, in recognizing and recovering communicative failures. Furthermore, focusing on schizophrenia patients’ performance per se, we observed a trend with regard to the increasing difficulty of understanding and recognizing different kinds of communicative failures, i.e. failure of expression act, failure of communicative meaning, and failure of the communicative effect. Learning outcomes: The reader becomes aware that schizophrenic patients perform less well than healthy controls in recognizing and recovering different kinds of communicative failures, and of the role played by Theory of Mind, and representational complexity involved in such different kinds of failures, in explaining patients’ performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim of the present study is to provide a multifocal assessment of pragmatic abilities in patients with right hemisphere damage (RHD). Pragmatics refers to the ability to use language and non-verbal expressive means (e.g., gestures) to convey meaning in a given context, and it also involves the appropriate use of connotative elements such as rhythm and prosody. Patients with RHD frequently report a wide range of pragmatic disorders: despite the heterogeneity of their clinical profiles, these difficulties can seriously undermine their ability to effectively communicate in everyday situations. We analysed the performance of 17 patients with RHD and 17 healthy controls using the Assessment Battery for Communication, a clinical tool for assessing a wide range of pragmatic phenomena - both in comprehension and production - and considering different expressive means. The results suggest patients have difficulties both in comprehending and producing pragmatic phenomena of differing complexity; in particular, patients seem to be significantly impaired when dealing with non-verbal modality, i.e., gestures and facial expressions. Moreover a hierarchical cluster analysis revealed the presence of a number of clusters corresponding to different outcomes of pragmatic performance, in line with the heterogeneity of communicative profiles following RHD frequently reported in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the pragmatic abilities of patients with schizophrenia in a variety of pragmatic phenomena expressed through different communicative means (language, gestures, and paralinguistic modality). For this purpose we used the Assessment Battery of Communication (ABaCo; Sacco et al., 2008). The ABaCo is a validated clinical tool for assessing pragmatic skills, which comprises five evaluation scales—linguistic, extralinguistic, paralinguistic, context, and conversational—investigating both comprehension and production of the main pragmatic phenomena involved in a communicative exchange, such as direct and indirect speech acts, irony, deceit, the violation of Grice's maxims, topic management, and turn-taking. The battery was administered to a group of seventeen patients with schizophrenia, and matched healthy controls. We expected the clinical group to perform widely worse than the control group in the different pragmatic dimensions investigated. Results showed that patients with schizophrenia performed significantly worse than controls on all the five scales of the battery, both in comprehension and production tasks. Moreover, the results within each scale showed a differentiated performance in the clinical group among the pragmatic phenomena, with irony assessed as the most difficult task. The implications of these results for research and treatment in schizophrenia are discussed. Learning outcomes: After reading this article, the reader will be able to: (1) summarize the preliminary assessment of pragmatic impairments in patients with schizophrenia; (2) describe a variegated communicative profile regarding different pragmatic phenomena; and (3) discuss the planning and evaluating specific rehabilitation programs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The aim of this paper was to develop and test two equivalent forms of the Assessment Battery for Communication (ABaCo), a tool for evaluating pragmatic abilities in patients with neuropsychological and psychiatric disorders. The equivalent forms were created using the data from a sample of 390 children, then tested in a sample of 30 patients with traumatic brain injury. Equivalent forms of the same test are useful in clinical practice and intervention research, when performance needs to be tested on two separate occasions, for example before and after a rehabilitation program. The present results provide additional evidence on the psychometric functioning of the equivalent forms of the ABaCo and their usability in a clinical context. Learning outcomes: The reader will be able to discuss the evidence of the psychometric propriety of the equivalent forms of the ABaCo and describe its potential usefulness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Objective: We compared, in a prospective study on patients with acute coronary syndrome, the predictive effect of a depression or anxiety diagnosis and of emotion-focused, problem-focused and dysfunctional coping strategies, as detected early after an acute event, on patients’ left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), a reliable prognostic index of disease severity, at a three-month follow up. Methods: Ninety consecutive patients following an acute coronary syndrome event (83.3% men; mean age 56.9±8.9years) were included in the study. Demographic and clinical characteristics, presence of depression and anxiety disorders (MINI), and active use of emotion-focused, problem-focused and dysfunctional coping strategies (Brief Cope) were assessed at the time of enrolment. LVEF at a three-month follow up was used as the outcome measure. Results: The medical predictors of LVEF accounted for 10.6% of the variance of LVEF at follow up. Emotion-focused coping strategies significantly contributed for an additional 6.1%, while the presence of a depression and/or anxiety disorder was not a significant predictor of LVEF at follow up, nor were dysfunctional and problem-focused coping strategies. Conclusion: Emotion-focused coping strategies at the time of the cardiac event were the only reliable psychological predictor of disease severity at a three-month follow up. These findings hint to the possibility that variables such as emotional coping may be a fruitful target for psychological treatments directed at cardiac patients in primary care settings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]