Abstract
There has been extensive research on impaired emotion recognition in schizophrenia in the facial and vocal modalities. The literature points to biases toward non-relevant emotions for emotional faces but few studies have examined biases in emotional recognition across different modalities (facial and vocal). In order to test emotion recognition biases, we exposed 23 patients with stabilized chronic schizophrenia and 23 healthy controls (HCs) to emotional facial and vocal tasks asking them to rate emotional intensity on visual analog scales. We showed that patients with schizophrenia provided higher intensity ratings on the non-target scales (e.g., surprise scale for fear stimuli) than HCs for the both tasks. Furthermore, with the exception of neutral vocal stimuli, they provided the same intensity ratings on the target scales as the HCs. These findings suggest that patients with chronic schizophrenia have emotional biases when judging emotional stimuli in the visual and vocal modalities. These biases may stem from a basic sensorial deficit, a high-order cognitive dysfunction, or both. The respective roles of prefrontal-subcortical circuitry and the basal ganglia are discussed.
Highlights
Chronic schizophrenia is a disabling disease that encompasses both cognitive and emotional disorders (Irani et al, 2011)
With the exception of neutral vocal stimuli, they provided the same intensity ratings on the target scales as the healthy controls (HCs). These findings suggest that patients with chronic schizophrenia have emotional biases when judging emotional stimuli in the visual and vocal modalities
The patients with schizophrenia scored significantly lower than HCs on the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale (MDRS) (t = 2.58; p = 0.01), categorical fluency (t = 2.8; p = 0.007), Trail Making Test (TMT) Part A (t = −3.54; p < 0.001), TMT Part B (t = −3.05; p = 0.004), TMT B–A (t = −2.21; p = 0.03), MCST perseverative errors (t = −2.64; p = 0.01), and the Digit SymbolCoding subtest (t = 4.06; p < 0.001), but not on any of the other cognitive tests
Summary
Chronic schizophrenia is a disabling disease that encompasses both cognitive and emotional disorders (Irani et al, 2011). For instance, have explored the visual modality with faces (see Kohler et al, 2010, for review and meta-analysis) while others have used vocal stimuli, such as emotional prosody (see Hoekert et al, 2007, for review and meta-analysis). These two meta-analyses revealed constant and replicable impairment of the perception of emotional faces and prosody and some clinical features, such as subtype, severity and medication, were found to be related to the impaired perception of emotional faces or prosody
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