Improved facial affect recognition in patients with first‐episode psychosis

Abstract

Aim: The present study aimed at assessing whether impaired facial affect recognition (FAR) in patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP) would improve after a brief intervention targeting FAR specifically.Methods: Thirty-five outpatients and 38 healthy controls were administered an intervention which involved training to recognize emotional information, conveyed by changes in facial features. Using a pre-and post-intervention design, two measurements of FAR were conducted using an experimental procedure with alternative sets of stimuli.Results: We found improved overall FAR performance in both participant groups with marked effects in recognizing anger, disgust and fear. Patients' post-intervention performance was comparable to healthy participants' baseline performance.Conclusions: The present improvement in facial affects recognition in FEP patients, despite only somewhat impaired, emphasizes the importance of early targeted interventions for FAR in psychosis. Further research is needed to assess whether this improvement will generalize to global social functioning. K E Y W O R D Searly psychosis, emotion perception, facial affect, intervention, negative valence

Face processing of social cognition in patients with first episode psychosis: Its deficits and association with the right subcallosal anterior cingulate cortex

“…By comparing FEP patients and HCs, we observed significant deficits in multiple face processing tasks that encompass emotional processing in FEP patients. We reproduced past reports in regard to impaired emotional processing in FEP patients (Barkl et al, 2014;Bozikas et al, 2019;Catalan et al, 2016;Dean et al, 2013), which may support the idea that the cohort and test battery used in the present study are compatible to other studies on social cognition deficits in psychosis. Importantly, we report correlations between face processing measures and the right scACC at both functional and structural levels in FEP patients.…”

Facial affect recognition moderates the relation between autonomic nervous system reactivity and aggression during dyadic conflict

“…Our results suggest that mechanisms of physiological reactivity and affect recognition also play a significant role in aggressive behavior in intimate relationships. Research has shown that affect recognition can be improved among clinical populations with clinical interventions (Bozikas et al., 2019; Tsotsi, Kosmidis, & Bozikas, 2017), although it is unclear if improving emotional decoding abilities works to decrease intimate partner violence perpetration. To date, interventions that target emotional regulation, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, have shown promising effects on reducing recidivism among intimate partner violence perpetrators (Zarling, Bannon, & Berta, 2019; Zarling & Berta, 2017; Zarling, Lawrence, & Marchman, 2015).…”