Abstract
Spontaneous emotional expressions (rapid facial mimicry) perform both emotional and social functions. In the current study, we sought to test whether there were deficits in automatic mimic responses to emotional facial expressions in patients (15 of them) with stable schizophrenia compared to 15 controls. In a perception-action interference paradigm (the Simon task; first experiment), and in the context of a dual-task paradigm (second experiment), the task-relevant stimulus feature was the gender of a face, which, however, displayed a smiling or frowning expression (task-irrelevant stimulus feature). We measured the electromyographical activity in the corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major muscle regions in response to either compatible or incompatible stimuli (i.e., when the required response did or did not correspond to the depicted facial expression). The compatibility effect based on interactions between the implicit processing of a task-irrelevant emotional facial expression and the conscious production of an emotional facial expression did not differ between the groups. In stable patients (in spite of a reduced mimic reaction), we observed an intact capacity to respond spontaneously to facial emotional stimuli.
Highlights
Emotional processing deficits, including a reduced ability to understand and express facial emotions, contribute to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia
We subjected the data to a three-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) with compatibility and muscle as repeated measures variables and group as an independent factor
The observed compatibility effect was similar for both muscles [muscles × congruency interaction: F(1,14) = 0.009, p = 0.927, η2 = 0.01, 62 vs. 59 ms for the zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii, respectively] and both groups [group × congruency interaction: F(1,14) = 0.157, p = 0.700, η2 = 0.01, 66 vs. 54 ms for patients vs. healthy controls, respectively]
Summary
Emotional processing deficits, including a reduced ability to understand and express facial emotions, contribute to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. It has been suggested that patients with schizophrenia are less accurate in facial expression of affective messages, showing reduced facial action responsivity across emotions and generalized performance deficits in emotion recognition (for review see e.g., Mandal et al, 1998; Trémeau, 2006). Exposed to particular facial expressions, people spontaneously mirror them with similar facial expressions (Dimberg et al, 2000; Wild et al, 2001). This phenomenon is known as rapid facial mimicry, which facilitates empathic feeling and social functioning, including the establishment of interpersonal relationship and understanding of other minds (Baron-Cohen, 2005). Investigations of spontaneous facial expression in schizophrenia, are of great theoretical and clinical relevance
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