Schizophrenia is associated with a strong deficit in the decoding of emotional facial expression (EFE). Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether this deficit is specific for emotions or due to a more general impairment in visual or facial processing. This study was designed to clarify this issue.
Thirty-two patients suffering from schizophrenia and 32 matched healthy control subjects performed several tasks evaluating the recognition of both changeable (i.e. eyes orientation and emotions) and stable (i.e. gender, age) facial characteristics. Accuracy and reaction times were recorded.
Schizophrenic patients presented a deficit of performance and reaction times in the perception of both invariant and changeable aspects of faces, without any specific deficit for emotional decoding.
Our results demonstrate a generalized face recognition deficit in schizophrenic patients, probably caused by a perceptual deficit in basic visual processing. It seems that the deficit in the decoding of emotional facial expression (EFE) is not a specific deficit of emotion processing, but is conversely at least partly related to a generalized perceptual deficit in lower-level perceptual processing, which occurs before the stage of emotion processing, and underlie more complex cognitive dysfunctions. This may have implications for further research and clinical situations.
Key words
Schizophrenia, faces, emotion, cognition, face recognition
Published in Psychiatry Research 255 (2017) 167–172