The cascade from basic visual processing to social dysfunction: An extended path model in a transdiagnostic sample of youth.
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: BackgroundSocial dysfunction is widespread across psychiatric disorders, but treatments remain limited. Identifying underlying mechanisms could inform novel treatment approaches that meaningfully improve clinical outcomes. We previously showed that basic visual processing deficits cascade through gaze perception and emotion recognition to impair theory of mind. Here, we test an extended model assessing whether this cascade ultimately predicts real-world social dysfunction via theory of mind in an expanded sample.MethodsA combined sample of 202 psychiatric patients with varying levels of social dysfunction and healthy individuals completed basic visual processing tasks, a multi-level social cognition battery that included measures of gaze perception, emotion recognition, and theory of mind, and clinical assessments of social functioning. A five-level path model evaluated the sequential cascade from visual processing to gaze perception, emotion recognition, theory of mind, and social functioning.ResultsThe extended five-level path model demonstrated good fit to the data. Poorer basic visual processing sequentially predicted deficits across intermediate social cognitive domains, culminating in theory of mind, which directly predicted worse social functioning.ConclusionThese findings indicate that basic visual deficits cascade through social cognitive steps to impair everyday social functioning. As a candidate shared mechanism contributing to social dysfunction, basic visual processing represents a promising target for psychiatric interventions.
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7213504376
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