Raffard stéphane

Paul Valéry University, Montpellier 3 · Département de Psychologie

Objective: Decision-making capacity for treatment is impaired in schizophrenia but it remains unknown if schizophrenia affects distinct decision-making capacities differently. Methods: In this study, we assessed concomitantly two decision-making capacities (i.e., antipsychotic treatment and COVID-19 vaccination) in 27 schizophrenia patients. Sociod...

Résumé Les troubles cognitifs sont désormais bien connus dans la schizophrénie mais leur évolution au cours du vieillissement demeurent peu décrits. Les études montrent que les troubles cognitifs présents chez 80% des sujets adultes sont des prédicteurs importants du fonctionnement en vie quotidienne. Dans une perspective vie entière, ils sont évi...

Abstract Objectives: The COVID-Related Thoughts and Behavioral Symptoms (Cov-Tabs) is a self-reported questionnaire developed to identify the presence of psychological distress and anxiety-related behavior associated with COVID-19. This scale has been used since the first episodes of mass contamination of COVID-19 disease in the USA without psycho...

Abstract It has been reported in the literature that false memories or memory impairments can be found in individuals with high schizotypal personality traits. However, these studies based their findings exclusively on verbal information. Extending upon prior research, the present study examined whether the recall of recorded number of deaths (nume...

Objective: Executive impairments are frequent and may concern a large spectrum of health conditions throughout life. Given the complexity of the executive functions, their assessment requires the administration of multiple tests. There is only one source of French-language normative data for seven traditional executive tests for adults under age 5...

Objective Evidence-based practice (EBP) is an approach that encourages clinicians to base their practice on evidence to improve the quality of patient care and reduce uncertainty in their clinical decisions. However, the state of knowledge and practice of neuropsychologists in French-speaking countries is still unknown. This study aimed to find out...

Abstract We assessed self-defining future projections (SDFPs) in women with breast cancer (BC) and their relationships with disease characteristics and quality of life. Forty women with BC in the course of treatment and 50 controls were asked to generate SDFPs and completed questionnaires for depression and anxiety symptoms and quality of life. Th...

Over the past decades, vaccination has proven to be largely beneficial to global health. Despite vaccine efficacy, the French population has been recently affected by more anti-vaccination attitudes and vaccine refusal, and it is therefore necessary to validate tools to study this health issue. The Vaccination Attitudes Examination scale (VAX) is a...

Objective: Persecutory ideas are highly frequent in psychotic disorders and particularly in schizophrenia. Although several measures exist to assess persecutory ideas in both clinical and non-clinical samples, there is a need for brief and psychometrically sound measures to capture the multidimensional aspects of paranoia in people diagnosed with s...

Abstract Objectives: Dwelling about positive experiences have been found to be positively related to mania and grandiose ideas. Nevertheless, besides some important limitations, past research has also neglected the nature (or characteristics) of memories individuals dwell on, and that might be specifically associated with grandiose ideas. Thus, the...

The Vancouver Obsessional Compulsive Inventory-Mental Contamination Scale (VOCI-MC) and the Contamination Thought-Action Fusion Scale (CTAF) are two self-report instruments that assess symptoms of mental contamination and fusion between thoughts, feelings and behaviours associated with contamination respectively. The aim of this study was to invest...

Flashbulb memories are autobiographical memories for important and emotional events, which have the particularity of being at the intersection of personal and public events. Autobiographical memory impairments are highly prevalent in schizophrenia, a psychiatric condition intrinsically linked to self-disorders. Thus, we aimed to evaluate flashbulb...

Objectives: Anhedonia and fatigue are trans-diagnostic symptoms commonly observed in schizophrenia. Anhedonia is a core negative symptom with a strong relationship with depression and is associated with diminished global functioning. Similarly, fatigue is also associated to depression and research across psychiatric illnesses indicate that fatigue...

Résumé : L’objectif de cet article est de présenter, en langue française une revue des connaissances actuelles sur les conséquences et déterminants de l’accommodation familiale. Celle-ci peut se définir par les changements de comportements qu’adoptent les membres d’une famille d’un proche souffrant de trouble mental dans le but de diminuer la souff...

Severe impairment of social functioning is the core feature of schizophrenia that persists despite treatment, and contributes to chronic functional disability. Abnormal non-verbal behaviors have been reported during interpersonal interactions but the temporal coordination of co-speech gestures with language abilities have been poorly studied to dat...

Abstract: Schizophrenia patients are at high risk for developing severe COVID-19 outcomes but recent evidence suggests that they are under-vaccinated. This study explored the role of potential attitudinal barriers by comparing schizophrenia patients with participants from the general population regarding COVID-19 vaccination rates, general attitude...

Over the past decades, vaccination has proven to be largely beneficial to global health. Despite vaccine efficacy, the French population has been recently affected by more anti-vaccination attitudes and vaccine refusal, and it is therefore necessary to develop and validate tools to study this health issue. The Vaccination Attitudes Examination scal...

This study investigated objective and subjective cognitive effort as a function of task difficulty in schizophrenia, based on the principles of motivational intensity theory. Thirty individuals with schizophrenia and 30 healthy controls worked on four levels of a working memory task ranging from easy to impossible. We assessed objective effort as c...

Recent evidence suggests that people with schizophrenia are at high risk for severe COVID-19 and should be prioritized for vaccination. However, impaired decision-making capacities could negatively affect the uptake of COVID-19 vaccination in this population. Capacity to consent to COVID-19 vaccination was assessed in 80 outpatients with schizophre...

Background: A major model in psychiatry that influences service delivery is the recovery model which emphasizes personal goals and overcoming obstacles to meet them. The Client Assessment of Strengths, Interests, and Goals - CASIG (Wallace, Lecomte, Wilde, & Liberman, 2001) is a well-known functional assessment, that was not only presented deficits...

Objectives: The Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms is an interview-based instrument evaluating the existence and severity of negative symptoms in people diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. The aim of this study is to translate and validate a French version of the CAINS in a French sample of outpatients diagnos...

Background: People with schizophrenia are at high risk for developing severe COVID-19 outcomes but recent evidence suggests that this population have lower vaccination rates than the general population. This gap in vaccination rates could be explained by attitudinal and structural barriers. Aims: This study explored the role of potential attitudin...

Recent evidence suggests that schizophrenia patients are at high risk for severe COVID-19 and should be prioritized for vaccination. However, impaired decision-making capacities could negatively affect the uptake of COVID-19 vaccination in this population. Competence to consent to COVID-19 vaccination was assessed in 80 outpatients with schizophren...

Aims Avolition defined as a lack of interest or engagement in goal-directed behavior plays a key role in everyday functioning in schizophrenia and is considered as one of the main contributors to the burden of disease. The aim of this study was to 1) validate the self-report BIRT Motivation Questionnaire (BMQ-S) seldom used before in schizophrenia...

Background: Lack of insight is a barrier to treating psychosis. Preliminary studies have suggested that showing people videos of their psychotic behaviour may improve personal insight. This clinical trial aimed to assess the effect of video selfconfrontation. Methods: Inpatients between 18 and 65 years old with schizophrenia or schizoaffective diso...

Abstract: Humans frequently use tools to reduce action-related efforts. Interestingly, several studies have demonstrated that individuals had tool-related biases in terms of perceived effort reduction during motor imagery tasks, despite the lack of evidence of real benefits. Reduced effort allocation has been repeatedly found in schizophrenia, but...

The goal of this study was to analyze the interpersonal coordination of patients suffering from schizophrenia (SZ) using a humanoid robot NAO. NAO is controlled by a neutrally-inspired model that allows it to be able to synchronize its movements with human movements. Using a robot has the advantage in that it can be modified and controlled without...

Improvising is essential for human development and is one of the most important characteristics of being human. However, how mental illness affects improvisation remains largely unknown. In this study we focused on socio-motor improvisation in individuals with schizophrenia, one of the more debilitating mental disorder. This represents the ability...

Abstract Introduction: Recent theoretical models and preliminary data suggest that shame is a central emotion in the context of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH or voice-hearing). Nevertheless, all previous studies were correlational. Thus, the present study sought to explore whether AVH experiences can trigger shame using an experimental design...

Abstract. The current literature has largely highlighted a deficit of effort-based decision-making for reward in schizophrenia. However, not all studies have dissociated effort from reward, while other studies emphasize that difficulty is the main determinant of effort rather than reward. In this study, 33 individuals with schizophrenia and 32 heal...

Background: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has long been considered as an anxiety disorder, disgust is the dominant emotion in contamination-based OCD. However, disgust seems resistant to exposure with response prevention partly due to the fact that disgust is acquired through evaluative conditioning. Aims: The present research investigates...

Aims Negative and Positive urgency are emotion-related impulsivity traits that are thought to be transdiagnostic factors in psychopathology. However, it has recently been claimed that these two traits are closely related to each other and that considering them separately might have limited conceptual and methodological value. The present study aime...

The aim of our study was to compare the performance of three different instruments measuring clinical and cognitive dimensions of insight. Data on 182 outpatients with schizophrenia and one-year follow-up assessments was drawn from the FACE-SZ cohort. Awareness of clinical state (« clinical insight ») was measured using both a clinician-rated meas...

Background Cognitive impairments are extremely common in schizophrenia and strongly predict deficits in daily functioning, poor management of medication, and multiple hospitalizations. Cognitive remediation is recognized to have a positive impact on cognitive impairments by engaging preserved cognitive functions or by implementing environmental sup...

Résumé Les fonctions exécutives représentent un ensemble de processus impliqués dans le contrôle volontaire de nos réponses comportementales face à des situations nouvelles et non routinières. Ces fonctions permettent à l'être humain de planifier ses buts à court et long terme, de se conformer à des règles sociales, de résoudre des problèmes ou de...

Purpose: Beyond the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the public's health, the length of lockdown and its possible psychological impacts on populations is heavily debated. However, the consequences of lockdown on psychotic symptoms have not yet been investigated. Methods: An online survey was run from April 13 to May 11, 2020; a total of 728 F...

Résumé Les hallucinations acoustico-verbales (HAVs) ou phénomène d’entente de voix doivent être considérées comme relevant d’un continuum entre le normal et le pathologique et cliniquement comme un phénomène transdiagnostique. Les études sur le sujet montrent que l’on retrouve ce phénomène aussi bien en population générale que dans des troubles men...

Abstract Introduction: Positive psychotic symptoms are suggested to be more prevalent in early adulthood. However, no previous study has examined a potential age effect especially for paranoia considering social reference and persecution as separated hierarchical dimension. Moreover, no previous study has examined the mechanisms involved in the dec...

Background Fatigue is a well-known common clinical feature of numerous chronic diseases including various forms of cancer, neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, and psychiatric disorders. A significant proportion of people with schizophrenia (30-60%) reportedly experience fatigue, which impacts negatively on participation in various a...

Abstract Background. Assessing an individual's capacity to consent to treatment is a complex and challenging task for psychiatrists and healthcare professionals. Diminished capacity to consent to pharmacological treatment is a common concern in individuals with schizophrenia. The MacArthur competence assessment tool for treatment (MacCAT-T) is the...

Résumé La psychologie anglo-saxonne a produit un nombre conséquent d’études mettant en évidence l’implication de mécanismes psychologiques dans le développement et le maintien des hallucinations acoustico-verbales (HAVs), aussi appelées phénomène d’entente de voix. S’il est souvent considéré, pour des raisons historiques, que les HAVs sont une des...

Introduction: To explain motivational difficulties in schizophrenia (SZ), attention has focused on the reward system and effort-based decision-making deficits. However, according to motivational intensity theory (MIT), effort is not directly determined by reward but by task difficulty. Moreover, no studies have examined the effort perception in the...

Background: Beyond the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the public's health, the length of lockdown and its possible psychological impacts on populations around the world is heavily debated. However, the consequences of lockdown on psychotic symptoms have not yet been investigated. Methods: An online survey was run from April 13 to May 11, 20...

Background & Objectives: A recent psychological model proposed that rumination might be involved in grandiose delusions (GD) by amplifying positive mood triggered by the occurrence of a positive event or the recall of positive autobiographical memories. This is the first study whose aim is to explore the role of rumination in the development and ma...

Misestimation of cognitive functioning has been largely described in individuals with schizophrenia. There is large evidence thatcorrelations between subjectively assessed cognitive functioning and objectively determined cognitive functioning are weak in non clinical individuals and may be more closely related to other psychoaffective or clinical f...

Background Fatigue is a well-known common clinical feature of numerous chronic diseases including various forms of cancer, neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, and psychiatric disorders. A significant proportion of people with schizophrenia (30-60%) reportedly experience fatigue, which impacts negatively on participation in various ac...

Background Motivation impairments have long been seen as a central feature of schizophrenia. Attention has focused on the reward system and effort-based decision-making deficits. However, according to motivational intensity theory (MIT), effort mobilization and perception are not directly – and not only – determined by reward but, fundamentally, by...

Background If obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has long been considered as an anxiety disorder, disgust is the dominant emotion in contamination-based OCD. However, disgust seems resistant to exposure with response prevention partly due to the fact that disgust is acquired through evaluative conditioning. The present research investigates a coun...

Background Fatigue is a well-known common clinical feature of numerous chronic diseases including various forms of cancer, neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, and psychiatric disorders. A significant proportion of people with schizophrenia (30-60%) reportedly experience fatigue, which impacts negatively on participation in various ac...

Abstract: The concept of "Self-Defining Future Projections" (SDFPs) has been recently introduced to better explore the link between future thinking and identity. To date, SDFPs have only been examined in young adults and it remains unknown how self-defining future thoughts evolve in aging. In this cross-sectional study, 43 young adults (age range =...

Cognitive models of psychopathology were applied to inform the relationships between paranoia, workplace bullying and deviance in UK and French teachers. Sixty-six UK teachers and fifty French teachers were asked to fill in an online survey comprised of the Green et al.’s Paranoia Thought Scales, Negative Acts Questionnaire, Depression, Anxiety and...

Apathy is a frequent and debilitating condition with few treatment options available in schizophrenia patients. Despite evidence of its multidimensional structure, most of past studies have explored apathy through a categorical approach. The main objective of this study was to identify the cognitive, emotional, motivational, and clinical factors at...

Abstract: Most individuals with schizophrenia will be confronted with some form of stigma. In recent years, clinicians and family members have increasingly contested the term "schizophrenia". Many of them discuss changing this name, as a means to fight stigma. Up until now, surprisingly, most research has been conducted using self-reports and behav...

Introduction: Feelings of shame may be an important factor implicated in the onset and maintenance of hallucination (or hearing voices). Shame has been shown to increase trauma-related intrusions and avoidance and may reinforce negative beliefs about the self, which in turn may contribute to hallucinations in clinical and non-clinical populations....

Abstract : Les symptômes négatifs, tels que l’apathie, l’anhédonie ou l’émoussement des affects ont des effets délétères sur la qualité de vie et le devenir fonctionnel de l’individu. Aucun traitement qu’il soit pharmacologique, via les techniques de stimulations transcrâniennes, ou psychologique n’a clairement démontré un efficacité quant à leur p...

Résumé En rupture avec les approches catégorielles et dimensionnelles et donc le modèle médical classique, l’approche par réseau appliquée à la psychopathologie constitue une approche holistique des troubles mentaux. Dans cette approche, les troubles mentaux ne sont plus conceptualisés comme étant des essences s’exprimant via l’expression d’un ense...

Aim: Apathy, defined as reduced goal-directed behavior, is a frequent symptom in mental and neurological disorders but has been poorly studied in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The main aim of this study was to compare levels of apathy between individuals with OCD, healthy controls and individuals with schizophrenia, a mental...

Background Evidence suggests that positive psychotic symptoms are more prevalent in early adulthood. However, studies have not examined a potential age effect in the general population specifically for paranoia. Further, whether paranoia’s hierarchical nature (i.e. persecution representing a more severe dimension compared to social reference) may b...

Abstract: Grandiose delusions (GDs) are defined as false beliefs about having an inflated worth, power, or a special identity which are firmly sustained despite undeniable evidence to the contrary. Although it is the second most commonly encountered delusional beliefs, GDs have received little attention. Thus, in this study, we explored the role of...

The present study examined the internal and external validity of the French version of the 12-item Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity Scale-Revised (DPSS-12) in a nonclinical sample from the general population. Two hundred and eighty-two participants completed the DPSSf-12 questionnaire as well as the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), Anxiety Trait...

Complete raw data can be found on COMPLETE DATA DPSSf. (XLSX)

Abstract This study examined the relationship between abusive supervision and non-clinical paranoia and explored which cognitive mechanisms are mediating this association (i.e. rumination, cognitive avoidance and negative affect). A sample of two hundred and five French-speaking workers currently in employment in France was recruited to fill in a b...

Synchronization of behavior such as gestures or postures is assumed to serve crucial functions in social interaction but has been poorly studied to date in schizophrenia. Using a virtual collaborative environment (VCS), we tested 1) whether synchronization of behavior, i.e., the spontaneous initiation of gestures that are congruent with those of an...

Recent research has supported the mediating role of dissociation in the relationship between childhood trauma (CT) and voice hearing in clinical and nonclinical populations. However, this mediating role has not yet been explored with regard to seeing visions (visual hallucinations). This study aimed to explore the mediating effect of dissociation o...

Background: Patients with schizophrenia (SZP) have been reported to exhibit impairments in reward-based decision-making, but results are heterogeneous with multiple potential confounds such as age, intelligence level, clinical symptoms or medication, making it difficult to evaluate the robustness of these impairments. Methods: We conducted a met...

Background: Aggressiveness is a stigma frequently associated with schizophrenia. The role of insight as a risk factor of aggressiveness remains contradictory; mainly because single measures of these states mask their complexity and heterogeneity. Methods: This study was conducted on 666 patients aged 15 and above with a DSM-IV-TR diagnosis of sc...

Despite the increasing number of researchers interested in self-face, so far, no study has summarized the behavioral findings that contribute to the debate on self-face advantage. Most studies have focused on neural correlates of the self, although functional uniqueness can also be considered an important criterion for determining whether a stimulu...

Background Grandiose delusions (GDs) are defined as false beliefs about having an inflated worth, power, or a special identity which are firmly sustained despite undeniable evidence to the contrary. GDs have received little attention although it is the second most commonly encountered delusional beliefs (Stompe, et al., 2006). Consequently, there i...

According to scientific research, individuals diagnosed with neurodegenerative dementia of the Alzheimer type and their surroundings (family, family caregiver), experience a phenomenon of family stigmatization of which there are many consequences. Not only can they experience emotional reactions such as fear, anxiety, more depressive symptoms, but...

The aim of the present study was to explore how schizophrenia patients attribute mind to a humanoid robot compared to healthy individuals. Results show that if there is no doubt that robots could assist schizophrenia patients in a variety of their living daily tasks, mind perception and other social cognition deficits could negatively impact their...