Investigating Cultural Measurement Bias in Social Cognition Tasks: Insights from Latines with Schizophrenia

Background and Purpose:
Social cognition, essential for navigating interpersonal relationships and achieving functional recovery, is a critical treatment target in schizophrenia research. However, studies consistently reveal that individuals from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, including Latines, perform more poorly on standard social cognition tasks compared to non-Latine White peers. These disparities raise concerns about cultural measurement bias and the validity of existing tools when used in diverse populations. This study investigates how Latines with schizophrenia interpret and respond to four widely used social cognition measures to explore whether socio-cultural context influences task comprehension, emotional interpretation, and social reasoning.

Methods:
This qualitative study utilized semi-structured cognitive interviews with 19 Latine adults diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Participants were recruited through prior studies, community outreach, and academic referrals. Interviews were conducted via Zoom and guided by cognitive interviewing methodology, focusing on four tasks from the Social Cognition Psychometric Evaluation (SCOPE) battery: the Bell-Lysaker Emotion Recognition Task (BLERT), Penn Emotion Recognition Task (ER-40), Hinting Task, and The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT). Participants discussed how they arrived at their responses, interpreted task content, and how cultural identity and life experience influenced their performance. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to examine data through both cognitive psychology and cognitive sociology frameworks.

Results:
Participants described using lived cultural knowledge to interpret task content, often revealing misalignment between task expectations and their own social norms. While BLERT was seen as realistic and culturally accessible, ER-40 and Hinting Task stimuli often led to confusion, particularly around “neutral” expressions and indirect speech. These difficulties were exacerbated by static images, ambiguous or culturally unfamiliar language, limited response options, and perceived cultural inauthenticity in scenarios. TASIT’s reliance on British-accented actors and subtle nonverbal cues posed additional challenges. Across tasks, participants described the emotional labor of navigating unfamiliar cultural expectations, and many misattributed “no emotion” to negative affect due to cultural values such as simpatía, which prioritizes warmth and positivity in interpersonal interactions.

Conclusions and Implications:
Findings demonstrate that current social cognition assessments may reflect measurement bias rather than true deficits among Latine individuals with schizophrenia. Cultural values, linguistic factors, and socio-economic inequities shape how these individuals perceive and respond to social information. The study underscores the need for culturally responsive assessment tools and highlights the importance of qualitative inquiry in illuminating sources of bias not captured by quantitative methods alone. Future research should prioritize co-developing measures with diverse populations and investigate how culturally congruent assessments might better inform intervention design. Incorporating socio-cultural context into measurement approaches is essential for equitable clinical assessment, culturally grounded treatment development, and health disparities reduction in psychosis research.