66 THE POSITIVE EFFECT OF AEROBIC EXERCISE ON SOCIAL COGNITION IN ADOLESCENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

Abstract Background In recent years, the social cognitive impairment of schizophrenia has become a focus of research. Social cognition refers to an individual’s ability to recognize, understand, and influence the behavior of others in social interactions, and for people with schizophrenia, impairment of this ability severely affects their social functioning and quality of life. As a special group of adolescents with schizophrenia, their social cognitive impairment is more significant. As a non-drug therapy, aerobic exercise has been proved to have a positive effect on social cognitive function in a variety of neuropsychiatric diseases. The aim of this study was to explore the potential positive effects of aerobic exercise on social cognition in adolescents with schizophrenia, and to provide evidence for clinical intervention. Methods A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was performed. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was performed on 60 patients diagnosed with juvenile schizophrenia in a hospital, and the selected patients were randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group, with 30 people in each group. The experimental group received aerobic exercise training for 30 minutes five times a week for 12 weeks, while the control group only did the same amount of stretching. Before and after the experiment, facial expression recognition, eye contact, social reasoning and other indicators of social cognitive ability were evaluated in the two groups. Results The results of social cognitive indicators before and after comparison between the experimental group and the control group are shown in Table 1. As can be seen from Table 1, in the facial expression recognition index, the average value of pre-test and post-test in the experimental group was 50.2 and 68.5. In the index of eye contact, the pretest average was 35.6, and the posttest average was 52. In the social reasoning index, the average value of pre-test was 42.3, and the average value of post-test was 59.8. Discussion The experimental group showed significant improvement in facial expression recognition, eye contact and social reasoning, which indicated that aerobic exercise had a positive effect on the social cognitive ability of adolescents with schizophrenia. This study not only provides a new idea and method for non-drug treatment of adolescents with schizophrenia, but also provides strong evidence for further exploring the impact of aerobic exercise on cognitive function in patients with mental illness. Future studies can further explore the effects of different exercise types, exercise intensity and exercise time on social cognition of adolescents with schizophrenia, as well as the combined application of aerobic exercise and other therapeutic means.