Social cognitive treatments for schizophrenia are a rapidly expanding area of research. In this comprehensive review of the treatment literature, we provide information on nearly 50 studies evaluating a range of social cognitive interventions, including broad-based, targeted, and comprehensive approaches. Research to date has established that some social cognitive domains are responsive to structured training, though much work still remains to be done in further refining these treatments, improving their effects on more complex social cognitive domains, and demonstrating both the durability of the training effects as well as their generalization to important social functioning outcomes. We end our review by offering hypotheses for why existing treatments may have had limited success in improving more complex social cognitive processes, and summarize ongoing issues and future directions in social cognitive treatment research.
Published by Elsevier Ltd.