Facial Affect Recognition Performance and Event-Related Potentials in Violent and Non-Violent Schizophrenia Patients

Abstract

We investigated whether male inpatients with schizophrenia and a history of hands-on violent offences (forensic schizophrenic, FOS) are more impaired in emotion recognition than matched schizophrenia patients without any history of violence (general psychiatric schizophrenic, GPS). This should become apparent in performance in psychometry and in scalp event-related brain potentials (ERPs) evoked by pictures of facial affect. FOS and GPS (each n = 19) were matched concerning age, intelligence, comorbid addiction, medication and illness duration. FOS revealed significantly poorer affect recognition (AR) performance, especially of neutral and fear stimuli. Analysis of ERPs revealed a significant interaction of hemisphere, electrode position and group of the N250 component. Post hoc analysis of group effect showed significantly larger amplitudes in FOS at FC3. These results support the hypothesis that in FOS emotional faces are more salient and evoke higher arousal. Larger impairment in AR performance combined with higher salience and arousal may contribute to the occurrence of violent acts in schizophrenia patients.