4/8/25 Anne-Kathrin Fett, City of St. Georges University of London: Social cognition, trust and social functioning in psychotic disorders
Clinical Brown Bag
Anne- Kathrin Fett, PhD 
Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Date: Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
Location: Zoom
Social cognition, trust and social functioning in psychotic disorders
Loneliness and social isolation are associated with poor mental health. Many individuals with psychotic disorders experience chronic social isolation across their lifespan. Social cognition, reduced trust and social reward sensitivity have been suggested as possible factors that may contribute to these challenges and psychotic symptoms. In this talk, I will give an overview of my research on social cognition, trust, social interaction, and social functioning in psychosis. I will present work on social functioning trajectories that used data from the Suffolk Mental Health Project, which followed patients for over 20 years, as well as findings from the Dutch GROUP study on age-related changes in social cognition and interpersonal functioning. I will also present results from my studies with the interactive trust game paradigm and Experience Sampling (ESM), which contribute to the understanding of the behavioural and neural mechanisms that underlie social functioning and symptom formation in psychosis. Lasty, I will talk about research that examined the feasibility of an interactive ESM smartphone application that aimed to improve social functioning and symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Biography: Dr Anne-Kathrin Fett is an associate professor at City StGeorges University of London. She completed her PhD on the neurocognitive mechanisms of social functioning in non-affective psychosis at the VU Amsterdam and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London. Before joining City, she was a Dutch Research Council Veni fellow and worked at the VU and KCL, supported by a Brain and Behaviour Foundation (NARSAD) Young Investigator grant. Her research uses psychological, epidemiological and neuroscience approaches to study the mechanisms that underlie different aspects of social functioning, such as loneliness and social isolation, in the general population and in individuals with psychotic disorders and other mental health conditions. Her work aims to contribute to the development of prevention and treatment approaches that can reduce the risk and burden of mental health disorders, loneliness, and social isolation.
Professor Fett will be presenting in Wilson 316 with a Zoom link below for those who are remote:
https://vanderbilt.zoom.us/j/96882292273?pwd=G3zeVaPsYWGy1e6p0IPIYap2c1SaT0.1
Meeting ID: 968 8229 2273
Passcode: 702697
Select publications:
· Fett, A. K. J., Viechtbauer, W., Penn, D. L., van Os, J., & Krabbendam, L. (2011). The relationship between neurocognition and social cognition with functional outcomes in schizophrenia: a meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(3), 573-588.
· Velthorst, Eva, Fabiana Engelsbel, René Keet, Jessica Apeldoorn, Rosa van Mourik, Evelien van der Ploeg, Maurice Topper, and Anne-Kathrin Fett. “The impact of loneliness and social relationship dissatisfaction on clinical and functional outcomes in Dutch mental health service users.” Psychiatry Research 342 (2024): 116242.