An empirical method for assessing social problem solving in schizophrenia.
Adults with schizophrenia show clear social problem-solving gaps on a new role-play test, echoing later findings across diagnoses and methods.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Sayers et al. (1995) built a new role-play test for social problem solving.
They gave it to adults with schizophrenia, adults with bipolar disorder, and healthy adults.
Each person acted out short social scenes while staff scored their answers.
What they found
The schizophrenia group scored lower on every skill.
They gave fewer ideas, picked weaker solutions, and explained their choices less.
The bipolar group also struggled, but their scores looked like the schizophrenia group, so the test could not tell the two apart.
How this fits with other research
Faja et al. (2023) later built a big battery for autistic kids.
Both papers show you need more than one task to see social gaps, but Susan picked tools that already existed while D et al. made a brand-new one.
Walley et al. (2005) used short written stories instead of role-play.
Their kids with intellectual disability showed the same kind of poor answers, proving the format matters less than the skill you test.
Hamama et al. (2021) asked autistic adults to fill out a self-report mind-reading scale.
They found that people who scored high on social insight still felt romantically unsure, hinting that knowing and doing are different skills.
Together these studies say: test both knowledge and real-time action, and never trust a single score.
Why it matters
If you work with adults who have serious mental illness, do not assume poor social choices mean poor motivation.
Use short, staged scenes to watch how they pick and explain solutions.
Add a second tool, like a simple story quiz, to see if the problem is knowledge or performance.
This one-two check keeps you from missing strengths and helps you write sharper social-skills goals.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The development of a multimethod social problem-solving battery for schizophrenia is described. The battery is unique in that empirical methods were used throughout its development. The battery includes components that tap skills for response generation and response evaluation. The behavioral components of social problem solving are assessed in an extended role-play format. Individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as well as nonpatient controls, completed the social problem-solving battery and cognitive measures. Subjects in the schizophrenia group performed more poorly than controls on measures of the ability to generate and evaluate response alternatives, as well as on the role-play test. The two patient groups did not differ in performance on any of the social problem-solving components. Appropriateness of affect was the most powerful predictor of problem-solving effectiveness.
Behavior modification, 1995 · doi:10.1177/01454455950193001