The current study investigated if deficits in processing emotional expression affect facial identity processing and vice versa in children with autism spectrum disorder. Children with autism and IQ and age matched typically developing children classified faces either by emotional expression, thereby ignoring facial identity or by facial identity disregarding emotional expression. Typically developing children processed facial identity independently from facial expressions but processed facial expressions in interaction with identity. Children with autism processed both facial expression and identity independently of each other. They selectively directed their attention to one facial parameter despite variations in the other. Results indicate that there is no interaction in processing facial identity and emotional expression in autism spectrum disorder.

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In adolescent and middle-aged schizophrenic patients and normals 10 different multiple-choice tests of 12 scored movie scenes lasting 10s were applied, measuring the ability to recognize faces, persons and mimic expressions. In all tests errors were significantly higher by a factor of 7 to 14 in patients as compared to normals. The relative impairment of adolescent schizophrenic patients (as compared to adolescent normals) was somewhat stronger than that of adult schizophrenics. This supports the hypothesis that the impairment found in schizophrenic patients is caused by the disease and not by other factors such as duration of illness or hospitalization.