Schizophrenia (SZ) is a chronic mental disorder characterized by longstanding and severe social functioning deficits. In trying to better understand psychosocial factors that perpetuate these functional deficits, this dissertation included three studies that examine cognitive and affective factors with the potential to improve functional outcomes in SZ: 1) emotional experience, 2) paranoia, and 3) reasoning. Study one examined negative/positive affect and social functioning with self-report measures among SZ, affective disorders, and the general population. Study 2 assessed paranoia and its relationship with the interpretation of the environment via affective sound localization in SZ. Study 3 compared probabilistic reasoning when estimating the likely source of threatening and non-threatening affective stimuli while also examining the relationship between probabilistic reasoning and delusional thinking in SZ. The findings of this dissertation suggest that for people with schizophrenia: 1) treatment of heightened negative affect and reduced positive affect may improve social functioning, 2) paranoia may aid localization of natural sounds that occur in the environment, and 3) promoting more conservative probabilistic reasoning may help to reduce delusional thinking.
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Emotional Experience, Paranoia, and Probabilistic Reasoning in Schizophrenia