Offspring of individuals with psychoses sometimes display an abnormal development of cognition, language, motor performance, social adaptation, and emotional functions. The aim of this study was to investigate the ability of children of mothers with schizophrenia (n=28) and bipolar disorder (n=23) to understand mental states of others using the Eyes Test (folk psychology or “theory of mind”) and physical causal interactions of inanimate objects (folk psychics). Compared with healthy controls (n=29), the children of mothers with schizophrenia displayed significantly impaired performances on the Eyes Test but not on the folk physics test. The children of mothers with bipolar disorder did not differ from the controls and outperformed the children of mothers with schizophrenia on the folk physics test. These results suggest that the attribution of mental states, but not the interpretation of causal interaction of objects, is impaired in offspring of individuals with schizophrenia, which may contribute to social dysfunctions.
Intuitive physics and intuitive psychology (“theory of mind”) in offspring of mothers with psychoses
