Although there is evidence of deficits in facial expression recognition in schizophrenic patients, studies have often included a very limited number of emotions and specific symptom profiles are rarely included in statistical analyses.

A group of 20 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, and a group of 20 normal controls (matched according to sex, age, educational level) were included. All patients were evaluated with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. For the facial expression recognition task, 56 faces were taken from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF; Lundqvist et al., 1998), which included 4 pictures of faces (2 male and 2 female) for each of the six basic emotions (sadness, anger, happiness, fear, disgust, surprise), in addition to 4 photos of faces with neutral expressions. Participants were asked to choose the emotion that corresponded with the face.

Analysis of variance (ANOVAs) revealed significant differences between schizophrenic patients and normal controls in terms of KDEF performance. Correlations were observed between KDEF performance and the Positive and Cognitive dimensions of the PANSS. Finally, independent t-tests were performed for scores for the specific emotional expressions of the KDEF, which revealed significant differences between the two groups for joy and surprise.

Results reveal that schizophrenic patients present facial expression recognition deficits compared to normal controls, in particular with the emotions joy and surprise. Furthermore, these deficits are specifically associated with the presence of positive and cognitive symptoms.