Performance-Based Assessment of Social Cognition in Borderline Versus Psychotic Psychopathology

Individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) are known to display deficits in social cognition (SC). Our sample comprised 81 patients enrolled in residential treatment for complex psychopathology. We used performance-based assessments to test the hypothesis that individuals with SSD would display decrements on the cognitive/perceptual facets of SC, whereas individuals with BPD would evidence greater dysfunction on the affective/interpersonal facets of SC, with consideration taken for how gender may interact with diagnosis to influence results. Our findings suggested that women with SSD displayed more impaired understanding of social causality compared with their female BPD counterparts, while female patients with BPD evidenced greater expectation for aggression in their SC compared with women with SSD. These findings provide partial support for our hypotheses while highlighting the importance of accounting for the influence of gender on SC functional disparities between these two groups.