A Sampedro, J Peña, N Ibarretxe-Bilbao, P Sánchez, N Iriarte-Yoller, S Ledesma-González, M Tous-Espelosin and N Ojeda,
Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, Nov 2019 09
As suggested by the Shared Vulnerability Model, impairment in executive functions could lead to worse creative performance among individuals with schizophrenia. Another impaired function in schizophrenia, previously related to creativity in healthy people, is theory of mind. However, little is known about the effect of theory of mind in creativity in schizophrenia. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyze differences in creativity among patients with schizophrenia compared to healthy controls and to explore the potential role of executive functions and theory of mind as mediators of this relationship.Forty-five patients with schizophrenia and 45 healthy controls underwent a neuropsychological assessment including executive functions (cognitive flexibility and working memory), theory of mind, and verbal and figural creativity.As expected, patients with schizophrenia obtained lower scores in creativity, cognitive flexibility, working memory, and theory of mind compared to healthy controls. Path analysis showed that theory of mind mediated the relationship between group (schizophrenia or healthy controls) and both figural (Z=2.075, p=.037) and verbal creativity (Z=2.570, p=.010). Working memory mediated the relationship between group and figural creativity (Z=2.034, p=.041) and was marginally significant for verbal creativity (Z=1.930, p=.053). Finally, cognitive flexibility mediated between group and figural creativity (Z=2.454, p=.014).Results suggest that the lower performance in creativity among patients with schizophrenia was partly due to an impairment in executive functions and theory of mind. The involvement of theory of mind opens up a new field of research as a possible risk factor in the Shared Vulnerability Model. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.