The Relationship Among The Humor Experience, Theory Of Mind And Social Anhedonia In Schizophrenic Patients

Objective Humor is a universal phenomenon of human social interaction and plays animportant role in everyday life. Having a good sense of humor is regarded as an ideal ofsocial quality, and helps to promote social interaction. There is a close relationshipbetween humor and interpersonal ability to experience pleasure (social anhedonia). Inrecent years, the study of humor is increasing, and it has been shown that humorexperience depends in part on executive function and psychological theory.Schizophrenia as a group with a wide range of social cognitive deficits disease, itsrelationship among humor experience，theory of mind and social anhedonia is unclear.This study assumes that patients with schizophrenia have deficits of humor experience,and there is a correlation among humor experience，theory of mind and social anhedonia.The aim of the study is to explore the relationship among humor experience，theory ofmind and social anhedonia. In addition, the Revised Social Anhedonia Scale (RSAS) wasrevised into Chinese and its reliability and validity were tested.Methods In study one,61schizophrenic patients without treatment and63healthysubjects were assessed with Humor Picture Test (HPT), Humor Video Test (HVT), theTheory-of-Mind Picture-Sequencing Task (ToM-PST) and the Chinese-Version of theRevised Social Anhedonia Scale(RSAS-C). To analyse the relationship among humorexperience, theory of mind and social anhedonia. In study two,314healthy subjects and204schizophrenic patients were asked to completed the RSAS-C. Two weeks later,75healthy subjects and102schizophrenic patients who were randomly selected from thetotal sample completed the RSAS-C again to compute the test-retest reliability. The criterion-related validity was evaluated by correlating the RSAS-C with the total score ofTAS-20and the Negative score of PANSS.Results In study one, compared with healthy subject in HPT, schizophrenic patientsshowed significantly higher non-humor picture rating score (24.41±8.82vs28.41±11.56, P <0.05), and less humor picture rating score (45.65±11.49vs34.41±13.06, P<0.05). Compared with healthy subject in HVT, schizophrenic patients also showedsignificantly less humor video rating score (3.56±0.57vs2.46±0.79, P <0.01) and thenumber of standard humorous moments (3.68±1.19vs2.42±1.40, P <0.01) and thesensitivity of standard humorous moments-d’(humor) score (1.11±0.46vs0.47±0.42,P <0.01). Compared to normal control, schizophrenic patients had significantly less totalscore (58.76±0.64vs39.89±12.33, P <0.01) of ToM-PST, but higher score (7.95±4.57vs12.79±5.35, P <0.01) of RSAS-C. Correlation analysis showed a negativecorrelation between d’(humor) score and the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale(PANSS) total score (r=-0.380，P <0.01) for the patients, and a positive correlationbetween RSAS-C score and PANSS total score (r=0.254，P <0.05). In schizophrenicpatients, there was significantly negative correlation between non-humor picture ratingscore and ToM-PST total score (r=-0.316，P <0.05), and positive correlation betweend’(humor) score and ToM-PST total score (r=0.400，P <0.01). And there wassignificantly negative correlation between d’(humor) score and RSAS-C score inschizophrenic patients(r=-0.270，P <0.05). In study two,(1) the Cronbach α-coefficientfor RSAS-C of total sample, patient group and control group were0.787,0.804,0.759respectively. The split half of reliability of those were0.715,0.740,0.676. And the test-retest reliability of those were0.902,0.916,0.831.(2) the scores of total sample, patientgroup and control group for RSAS-C correlated with TAS-20total score were0.261,0.398,0.154(all P <0.01).The negative score of PANSS correlated with the score forRSAS-C of patient group was0.303(P <0.01).(3) schizophrenic patients had higher scores of the RSAS-C than the healthy subjects, it suggested that the RSAS-C had gooddiscriminant validity.Conclusion Study one shows that schizophrenic patients had poor ability of humorexperience. This deficit may be related to the impairments of theory of mind and socialanhedonia. Study two indicates that the RSAS-C has good reliability and validity inapplication to Chinese people.