A study into the development of offspring from a parent with psychoses examines how these children understand the mental state of others and casual interactions of inanimate objects. Children of mothers with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder differed from each other, with folk psychology not being impaired in children of mothers with bipolar disorder, and being significantly impaired in children of mothers with schizophrenia. "Compared with healthy controls (n = 29), the children of mothers with schizophrenia displayed significantly impaired performances on the Eyes Test but not on the folk physics test when corrected for IQ. The children of mothers with bipolar disorder did not differ from the controls."
We found that folk psychology ("theory of mind") was significantly impaired in children of mothers with schizophrenia but not in children of mothers with bipolar disorder. This is consistent with the view that schizophrenia vulnerability is associated with more severe early impairments than vulnerability to bipolar disorder (Murray et al., 2004). Although the children of mothers with schizophrenia also achieved lower scores on the folk physics test as compared with the controls, this difference did not reach the level of statistical significance when it was corrected for IQ.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:42AM
This [cloudfront.net] is the pictoral summary and, man, those female eyes on the left side are hot. That's the kind of woman who would show an armpit, briefly, if she knew you were interested in her grooming habits. I'm kneading my dick just thinking about it.
What is most interesting is that, according to that article, is that kids born to bipolars have a higher IQ compared to control kids. Probably because most bored suburban housewives in Orange County (along with the Catholic housewives of San Diego's North County) who don't have to work for a living like most women nowadays do, can afford private schooling and be able to sit with an idle mind all day until something magically happens which gives them purpose, something like Munchausen by Proxy. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by danmars on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:50AM
To those who, like myself, have never heard of the "Eyes Test", it apparently has you choose one of four possible emotions being experiences by the bearer of the eyes for a whole bunch of pictures of eyes. Supposedly they use answers to measure empathy. Here [romankrznaric.com] is an article I found that covers it a little bit, with 3 examples. The link that several websites use to get to a full test seems to be dead.
(Score: 1) by danmars on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:54AM
And, to be clear, I say "supposedly" because it seems that ability to read emotions in eyes is not the same thing as empathy. I would fully expect a psychopathic or (functioning level of) autistic person to be able to learn cues for how to read basic emotions in eyes. I got the 3 examples right, and I certainly am not highly empathic.
(Score: 1) by song-of-the-pogo on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:52PM
Agreed that the ability to read emotions does not equate to empathy. For reasons I won't bother going into here, I've taken a battery of tests, including the eyes test on which I scored above average (90% correct), and the EQ (empathy quotient) test on which I scored ... well below average (ok, I got a 5). Evidently I'm an unfeeling robot who is nevertheless fully capable of recognizing human emotional facial expressions.
"We have met the enemy and he is us."