Impaired coherence of life narratives of patients with schizophrenia

  • Self-narratives of patients have received increasing interest in schizophrenia since they offer unique material to study patients’ subjective experience related to their illness, in particular the alteration of self that accompanies schizophrenia. In this study, we investigated the life narratives and the ability to integrate and bind memories of personal events into a coherent narrative in 27 patients with schizophrenia and 26 controls. Four aspects of life narratives were analyzed: coherence with cultural concept of biography, temporal coherence, causal-motivational coherence and thematic coherence. Results showed that in patients cultural biographical knowledge is preserved, whereas temporal coherence is partially impaired. Furthermore, causal-motivational and thematic coherence are significantly impaired: patients have difficulties explaining how events have modeled their identity, and integrating different events along thematic lines. Impairment of global causal-motivational and thematic coherence was significantly correlated with patients’ executive dysfunction, suggesting that cognitive impairment observed in patients could affect their ability to construct a coherent narrative of their life by binding important events to their self. This study provides new understanding of the cognitive deficits underlying self-disorders in patients with schizophrenia. Our findings suggest the potential usefulness of developing new therapeutic interventions to improve autobiographical reasoning skills.

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Author:Mélissa C. Allé, Jevita Potheegadoo, Christin Köber, Priscille Schneider, Romain Coutelle, Tilmann HabermasORCiDGND, Jean-Marie Danion, Fabrice Berna
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-412330
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/srep12934
ISSN:2045-2322
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26255756
Parent Title (English):Scientific reports
Publisher:Nature Publishing Group
Place of publication:London
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2015/08/10
Date of first Publication:2015/08/10
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2016/08/24
Volume:5
Issue:12934
Page Number:10
First Page:1
Last Page:10
Note:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
HeBIS-PPN:404507034
Institutes:Psychologie und Sportwissenschaften / Psychologie
Dewey Decimal Classification:1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 15 Psychologie / 150 Psychologie
6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0