The team of researchers at FIDMAG Germanes Hospitalàries has developed an innovative tool to analyse how people with schizophrenia process information, focusing on the two thinking systems described by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman: fast (intuitive, automatic) thinking and slow (analytical, reflective) thinking.
The study, led by Betül Yildirim together with Irene Gómez, Núria Ramiro, Paola Fuentes-Claramonte, María Ángeles García-León, Peter McKenna and Edith Pomarol-Clotet, is based on the hypothesis that the delusions - one of the characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia - could be related to an over-reliance on fast thinking and/or a reduced involvement of slow thinking. This cognitive imbalance could lead to misjudgements of environmental events and make it difficult for the patient to correct them.
To investigate this theory, the researchers developed a battery of 137 questions designed to induce errors when responding quickly and intuitively, ie using fast thinking. These questions were first tested on 176 healthy people and then on 15 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia diagnosed according to DSM-5 criteria.
The results revealed that both the healthy volunteers and the patients made errors on the questions designed to induce fast thinking. In addition, the patients made more errors than the healthy subjects.
These findings were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Psychiatric Association of Turkey (where the first author, Betül Yildirim, is from) and the speaker won an award.
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