Schizophrenia Daily News Blog

Does Socializing Improve Mental Functioning? Probably

People who have schizophrenia often tend to avoid social interaction due to anxiety and other factors. Its also common for people who have schizophrenia to have cognitive difficulties. Now a new research study seems to suggest that these two factors may be interrelated.

Researchers at the University of Michigan explored the possibility that social interaction improves mental functioning. In a series of related studies, they tested the participants’ level of cognitive functioning, comparing it to the frequency of participants’ social interactions. They found that people who engaged in social interaction displayed higher levels of cognitive performance than the control group. In other words, social interaction seemed to aid intellectual performance.

“Social interaction,” the authors suggest, “helps to exercise people’s minds. People reap cognitive benefits from socializing,” They speculate that social interaction “exercises” cognitive processes that are measured on intellectual tasks. “It is possible,” the authors conclude, “that as people engage socially and mentally with others, they receive relatively immediate cognitive boosts.”

Source: “Mental Exercising Through Simple Socializing: Social Interaction Promotes General Cognitive Functioning,”
by Oscar Ybarra, Eugene Burnstein, Piotr Winkielman, Matthew C. Keller, Melvin Manis, Emily Chan, and Joel Rodriguez of the University of Michigan, and published by SAGE in the February issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, is available at no charge for a limited time at http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/34/2/248.