Assessment of social cognition in schizophrenia through the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test. Implications for rehabilitation

Introduction: Schizophrenia is a serious and chronic mental illness that has effect on cognitive and social functioning of a person who suffers it. Recent research points out that social cognition subprocesses, such as Theory of Mind, social perception or emotional processing, have to do with some problems that patients show in their social adjustment. Aim: Assessing ability of recognizing mental states from facial expressions in schizophrenia patients compared to a control group. Subjects and methods: 17 stable schizophrenia patients who are aware of the illness and 17 healthy people, with the same age and sociocultural level, took the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test Revised Version of Baron- Cohen. Results: Compared with the control group, subjects with schizophrenia showed much lower scores. Conclusions: It is confirmed that schizophrenia patients have impairments to understand facial expressions, especially from the eyes. That is typical of this illness, so it is necessary to do interventions at that point. Furthermore, inability to recognize emotions, as a domain of social cognition, contributes to deficit in functional outcome in schizophrenia. Finally, some treatment programs are put forward.

Reflections About the Teaching Methodology Processes Related with the Cognition of the Superior Education Student

In concordance whit permanent global and local changes in superior education, not only in Colombia but in the world, and having in account the relevance of pedagogical actions and their incidence in the student’s cognitive level, it’s necessary analyze and to reflect about the mecanism involved in the learning processes, in order to improve the curriculums and inside of them, the teaching methodologies, pedagogy an didacts that promote better the students cognition. In the present article an analysis is made of teaching methodologies developed in Institutions of superior education with subsequent learnings that not always facilitate the cognitive development of the student, as well as a proposal of educative innovation elements aimed to guide the teachers into a careful consideration of their pedagogical practice.