Seeing through the Eyes of Others: Social Interaction Perception in Normal and Schizophrenia Subjects

What cognitive processes specify understanding of humans’ behavior in communicative situations? 51 healthy controls and 50 schizophrenia patients were presented with social “silent” video clips and then they performed flicker task and predicted characters’ behavior. During the experiment eye movements were recorded. Observers, who have made successful predictions, evaluated the characters’ actions, specified how they categorized the objects and events, and then profiled the objects’ features, on which just these categorizations were based. Information about these features remained in working memory and directed a communicative situation’s perception. Observers noticed the events, relevant to the viewpoints of the characters, and understood their gazes, gestures and actions. Those, who have made unsuccessful predictions, advanced hypotheses about how the characters categorized the objects and events, but they did not profile the objects’ features, on which categorizations were based. They demonstrated “blindness” to the events, relevant to the viewpoints of the characters, and did not understand a coherence of their actions.

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