Advances in the ecological validity of research on social cognition in schizophrenia: A systematic review of the literature.

Introduction: Ecologically valid assessments need to require tasks representative of real, everyday interactions between people in a social environment (i.e., verisimilitude) and to predict aspects of real-life performance in those same interactions (i.e., veridicality). To determine how researchers interested in social cognition among people with schizophrenia currently understand and apply ecological validity in their work, we conducted a systematic review of studies that had the ecological validity of their results as an explicit objective.

Methods: We performed the described systematic review following PRISMA guidelines.

Results: Of the 18 studies reviewed, only two defined , 15 incorporated modifications to improve their verisimilitude, eight proposed analyses to examine their veridicality, and seven aimed to achieve both objectives.

Conclusions: Our systematic review suggests that very few published studies on social cognition among people with schizophrenia have explicitly defined , and most have focused only on the verisimilitude of the tasks required while neglecting the veridicality of the results.