The Comprehension and Production of Counterfactuals by Individuals with Schizophrenia

Date

2025-8

Author

Yılmaz Çelik, Elif

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Counterfactuals (If Mary had studied hard, she would have passed the exam) are complex linguistic structures that require morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic prerequisites along with cognitive abilities such as counterfactual reasoning, theory of mind, working memory and inhibition. Although the comprehension and production of counterfactuals have been extensively investigated in neurotypical populations, research on the processing of counterfactuals remains scarce in clinical populations. Schizophrenia, a psychiatric condition associated with executive dysfunction and language impairment, provides a suitable context for the examination of counterfactuals. The present study thus aimed to investigate the comprehension and production of counterfactuals in Turkish (Dersine çalışsaydı sınavı geçerdi) by individuals with schizophrenia. 40 Turkish-speaking individuals with schizophrenia in symptomatic remission and 40 matched healthy controls completed a truth-value judgment task to test their comprehension, and a dialogue completion task to test their production of counterfactuals. Results indicated that individuals with schizophrenia performed significantly worse in both comprehension and production of counterfactuals with lower accuracy rates compared to the control participants, indicating a deficit in counterfactual processing. Further analyses revealed that education was a significant predictor in the schizophrenia group for improved comprehension and production of counterfactuals. These findings suggest that counterfactual comprehension and production deficits should be considered a key target in cognitive/linguistic rehabilitation programs for individuals with schizophrenia, and highlight the potential role of education in mitigating linguistic and cognitive impairments associated with the disorder.

Subject Keywords

counterfactuals, schizophrenia, language impairment

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/115517

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis