Facial emotion space in schizophrenia

2007

Introduction. Previous studies show that patients with schizophrenia have a deficit in facial emotion recognition. In the framework of emotion categorisation theories, the purpose of the present study was to test if this impairment could result from abnormal boundaries between emotions (whether these boundaries are shifted along continuums or are less sharpened). Method. Twenty-six schizophrenic patients and the same number of healthy participants were required to perform a facial emotion recognition task and an emotion categorisation task with different emotion intensities obtained using morphing techniques. Results. The main results indicate that schizophrenic patients exhibited an emotio…