Dysfunction of categorization of emotional faces in people with schizophrenia

Abstract

People with schizophrenia often show deficits in recognizing facial emotions, which contributes to poor social functioning. In this experiment we directly investigated how 20 people being treated for schizophrenia categorized emotional faces. In a control group of healthy people who had no mental illness, happy faces were classified faster than sad faces, that is, there was a positive classification advantage. However, this phenomenon was not present for inverted faces. Compared with the control group, the people with schizophrenia categorized emotional faces more slowly, with less accuracy, and without a positive classification advantage, except for an overall delayed response for inverted rather than right-way-up conditions. Although face inversion delayed the categorization of neutral faces in the group with schizophrenia, inversion effects for both happy and sad faces did not differ between the 2 groups. These results suggest a dysfunction of categorization of emotional faces in people with schizophrenia, although these individuals could adopt the same criterion pattern emotions as the control group did on faces shown inverted and the right way up. Our findings provide new evaluation evidence for practitioners treating people with schizophrenia.