Basic self-disorders in adolescence predict schizophrenia spectrum disorders in young adulthood: A 7-year follow-up study among non-psychotic help-seeking adolescents.

Background And Goals: Recent studies indicate that basic self-disorder (SD) is a core clinical phenotype of schizophrenia and its spectrum. The goal of the present study was to test the degree to which SD characterizes the pre-onset phase of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (SSD). A secondary goal was to replicate previous findings regarding the long-term stability of SD.

Metacognition strengthens the association between neurocognition and attenuated psychosis syndrome: Preliminary evidence from a pilot study among treatment-seeking versus healthy adolescents.

Background: In a pilot study, we assessed the potential value of deficits at the metacognitive versus the neurocognitive level of functioning for identifying adolescents with attenuated psychotic syndrome (APS).

Method: Twenty-two treatment-seeking adolescents with APS, 42 treatment-seeking comparisons, and 34 age-matched healthy comparisons were evaluated using the Prodromal Questionnaire, the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes, and the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire. Neurocognitive and metacognitive functioning were assessed in two non-social (verbal memory and executive functioning) and two social (facial emotion perception and theory of mind) cognitive domains.

Basic self-disturbance, neurocognition and metacognition: A pilot study among help-seeking adolescents with and without attenuated psychosis syndrome.

Aim: The goal of this pilot study was to assess the association between basic self-disturbance (SD) and deficits in neurocognitive and metacognitive functioning among help-seeking adolescents with and without attenuated psychosis syndrome (APS).

Methods: Sixty-one non-psychotic, help-seeking adolescents (age 13-18) were assessed with the examination of anomalous self-experience, the structured interview for prodromal syndromes and a new metacognitive approach to neurocognitive assessment applied to two non-social (executive functions and verbal memory) and two social (theory of mind and emotion recognition) domains. After each answer, subjects were also requested to indicate their level of confidence in the answer and to decide whether they desired it to be "counted" toward their total score on the task.

Metacognition in non-psychotic help-seeking adolescents: associations with prodromal symptoms, distress and psychosocial deterioration.

Objective: To explore the notion that difficulties in metacognitive functioning are a core pre-psychotic feature of emerging schizophrenia and its spectrum.

Method: Seventy-eight help-seeking, non-psychotic adolescents (age 13-18) were assessed with the Prodromal Questionnaire (PQ), the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes (SIPS), two scales of social and role functioning, and a metacognitive version of two non-social (verbal memory and executive functioning) and two social (facial emotion perception and Theory of Mind) cognition tasks. In addition to the standard administration of the tasks, subjects were also asked to rate their level of confidence in the correctness of each answer, and to choose whether they wanted it to be "counted" toward their overall performance score on the task.