A - 130 Differences in Emotion Identification in Schizophrenia, Bipolar with or without Psychosis, and Healthy Controls.

Abstract

Research suggests individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar with psychotic features have difficulty accurately identifying emotions expressed by others. Such findings raise questions to whether impairments in emotion identification are better explained by the presence of psychosis, regardless of diagnosis. The Emotion Evaluation Test (EET) of The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT) was administered to individuals with schizophrenia (SZ; N = 22), bipolar disorder with psychotic features (BP+; N = 20), bipolar disorder without psychotic features (BP-; N = 21), and healthy controls (HC; N = 22). The EET comprises 24 video vignettes portraying happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and neutral emotions. Participants were prompted to identify the emotion in each vignette. Emotion identification of positive, negative, and neutral emotions was compared between groups. Group comparisons showed that the SZ group performed significantly worse than the other groups when identifying positive and negative emotions. The BP+ group performed significantly worse than BP- and HC when identifying negative emotions. No significant differences were found in neutral emotion identification between groups. The BP+ group was less accurate in identifying negative emotions but not positive emotions compared to the BP- and HC groups. Further investigation is required to determine factors that contribute to this differential performance.