Objective: Humans are social creatures, with desires to connect or belong, producing loneliness when isolated. Individuals with schizophrenia are often more isolated than healthy adults and demonstrate profound social communication impairments such as vocal affect perception (prosody). Loneliness, levels of desire for social connectedness (need to belong, NTB), and their relationship to perception of social communications have not been investigated in schizophrenia. Method: In a sample of 69 individuals (36 SZ), we measured endorsements of loneliness and NTB, and evaluated their putative relationships to clinical symptoms and social communication abilities, as indexed by emotional prosody and pitch perception. Results: Loneliness endorsement was highly variable but particularly so in patients, whilst patients endorsed NTB at levels equivalent to healthy controls. In schizophrenia, pitch and prosody acuity were reduced, and prosody perception correlated with NTB. Loneliness, but not desire for social connectedness, correlated with negative symptoms. Conclusion: Loneliness and negative symptoms likely exert bidirectional effects on each other. Loneliness and desire to form interpersonal attachments may be pivotal in shaping and stimulating social interactions and, subsequently, the ability to perceive social intent through prosody. Intact NTB levels in patients augurs well for cognitive remediation which, target vocal-communication processing to improve social skills.

Influence Of Desire To Belong And Feelings Of Loneliness On Emotional Prosody Perception In Schizophrenia.