Face and emotion recognition in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, ultra-high risk for psychosis, unaffected siblings, and healthy controls in a sample from Turkey

Meylin Sağdıç; Busra Izgi; Hale Yapici Eser; Mete Ercis; Alp Üçok; Kemal Kuşçu

doi:10.1016/j.scog.2024.100301

Face and emotion recognition in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, ultra-high risk for psychosis, unaffected siblings, and healthy controls in a sample from Turkey

Schizophr Res Cogn. 2024 Feb 3:36:100301. doi: 10.1016/j.scog.2024.100301. eCollection 2024 Jun.

Authors

Meylin Sağdıç¹, Busra Izgi^{2

3}, Hale Yapici Eser^{2

4

4}, Mete Ercis⁵, Alp Üçok⁵, Kemal Kuşçu⁴

Affiliations

¹ Marmara University, School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, İstanbul, Turkey.
² Koç University, Graduate School of Health Sciences, Istanbul, Turkey.
³ Koç University Research Center for Translational Medicine, İstanbul, Turkey.
⁴ Koç University, School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, İstanbul, Turkey.
⁵ İstanbul University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, İstanbul, Turkey.

Abstract

Face and emotion recognition are crucial components of social cognition. We aimed to compare them in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (SCZ), ultra-high risk for psychosis (UHR), unaffected siblings of schizophrenia patients (SIB), and healthy controls (HC).

Methods: One hundred sixty-six participants (45 SCZ, 14 UHR, 45 SIB, and 62 HC) were interviewed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5). Positive and Negative syndrome scale (PANSS), PennCNB Facial Memory (CPF), and Emotion Recognition Task (ER40) were applied.

Results: In CPF, SCZ performed significantly lower than SIB and HC. SIB was also significantly lower than HC for total correct responses. The sample size of the UHR group was small, and the statistical comparisons did not reach a significance, however, a trend towards decreased performance between the SCZ and SIB was found. In ER40, SCZ performed significantly lower than HC and SIB in all domains, except for the insignificant findings for angry ER between SIB and SCZ. SIB also performed significantly lower than HC for angry, negative, and total ER. UHR was similar to SCZ for happy and sad ER and performed significantly lower than HC for happy ER. The effect of SCZ diagnosis on the efficiency of CPF and ER40 was significant when corrected for age and education. For SCZ, PANSS also significantly affected the CPF and ER40.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest varying levels of face and emotion recognition deficits in individuals with SCZ, UHR, and SIB. Face and emotion recognition deficits are promising schizophrenia endophenotypes related to social cognition.

Keywords: Cognition; Emotion recognition; Face recognition; Schizophrenia; Sibling; Ultra-high risk for psychosis.