Effects of emotion and identity on facial affect processing in schizophrenia

Psychiatry Res. 2005 Feb 28;133(2-3):149-57. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2004.08.008.

Abstract

We used facial affect labeling and matching tasks to study effects of (1) emotion and (2) identity on facial affect processing in patients with remitted schizophrenia (n=30) compared with healthy controls (n=30). The patients (1) had a specific deficit for labeling facial affects of sadness and anger but not happiness, disgust and fear; they (2) performed as well as controls in matching facial affects in one face but were impaired in matching facial affects in two different faces. The patients' impairment in facial affect processing may be emotion-specific. The effects of identity on facial affect processing are discussed in the light of several hypotheses (a deficit of context processing, a global-local processing impairment or a selective attention deficit), and may be related to frontal, prefrontal or amygdala dysfunctions.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Affect*
  • Attention
  • Cognition Disorders / diagnosis
  • Cognition Disorders / etiology*
  • Facial Expression*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Neuropsychological Tests
  • Schizophrenia / complications*
  • Severity of Illness Index
  • Social Identification*