Social perception and knowledge impairments in severe alcohol use disorder: Group and individual-level findings

Abstract

Background: Consistent data highlight the presence and clinical significance of social cognition impairments in severe alcohol use disorder (SAUD). However, social perception and knowledge (i.e., the ability to interpret social situations and to identify latent social rules), an important social cognition component, has not yet been explored in this disorder.

Method: 35 patients with SAUD and 35 healthy controls (HC) completed the Social Perception and Knowledge test (PerSo), an experimental task requiring participants to comprehensively describe social situations and to identify the social rules illustrated in 8 pictures. We performed group and single-case analyses.

Results: Patients with SAUD, as a group, spontaneously identified less relevant "where"/"who"/"what" aspects of the social situations (social perception) than HC. They were however able to provide these elements when explicitly asked to. They were also less able to identify the social rules that subtended the situations (social knowledge). Single-case analyses revealed that 23 % of patients were significantly impaired for social perception, and 34 % for social knowledge.

Discussion: We provide novel evidence that SAUD is associated with social perception and knowledge impairments at the group level, and that these impairments strongly vary across patients. Such results should lead to the integration of social perception and knowledge impairments in the conceptualization and treatment of socio-affective difficulties in SAUD.

Keywords: Alcohol dependence; Alcohol-use disorder; Social cognition; Social functioning; Social knowledge; Social perception.