Typicality range deficit in schizophrenics' recognition of emotion in faces

Abstract

Severity of thought disorder in schizophrenics was assessed by a task that involved recognition of joy and shame expressions, with the expressions varied for typicality of the emotion category. Accuracy, typicality rating, and reaction time were measured in schizophrenic patients who were high or low on Whitaker's Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST) and in depressive and normal controls. All groups had significant variation of typicality ratings for joy (normal typicality range), but the clinical groups had smaller typicality ranges for shame recognition and higher mean typicality ratings than did normals. High WIST schizophrenics were least accurate on low typical shame expressions. Results imply that, for shame recognition, schizophrenic and depressive groups used common categorization (no typicality variation in category members) rather than resemblance categorization.

The Noh mask test for analysis of recognition of facial expression

“…According to the report by Dougherty et al and Muzekari and Bates, schizophrenics recognized joy equally as well as normals, but recognized shame more poorly 9 , 10 . Burch performed an experiment to suggest the dysfunction of perception of delicate facial expression in psychiatric patients 3 . Further developments of our test using the Noh mask may include the evaluation of the dysfunction of perception on delicate facial expression in psychiatric patients.…”

“…However, human beings cannot adapt to life if they can only recognize basic emotions. Therefore, research concerning delicate emotions is important 2 , 3 …”

Masked ambiguity – Emotion identification in schizophrenia and major depressive disorder

“…Specific impairments in patients with schizophrenia have been identified in tasks that employ the identification of emotions diverging from prototypical, basic expressions of emotion (Burch, 1995), such as subtle (Tremeau et al, 2015) and ambiguous emotions (Ketteler et al, 2012;Tsui et al, 2013). Tasks that use facial stimuli with (morphed) faces showing different degrees of emotional intensity have been proposed to aid the identification of differential deficits because of their ambiguous nature, leaving some room for a different interpretation (Huang et al, 2011;Moritz et al, 2012).…”

Cross-Cultural Aspects of Social Cognitive Abilities in Schizophrenia

“…However, there is only lit tle evidence that patients with schizophrenia can be reliably distinguished from depressed patients on tasks employing recognition of explicit emotions (Walker et al, 1984;Weniger et al, 2004). Yet, a promising approach is the recognition of subtle emotions, which seems to be specifically compromised in patients with schizophrenia (Burch, 1995).…”