Misattribution Bias in Facial Expressions Among Schizophrenia Patients
Author Information
Author(s): Premkumar Preethi, Cooke Michael A., Fannon Dominic, Peters Emmanuelle, Michel Tanja M., Aasen Ingrid, Murray Robin M., Kuipers Elizabeth, Kumari Veena
Primary Institution: King's College London
Hypothesis
Patients with schizophrenia would show impairment in recognizing fear and anger, and a higher number of emotion misattributions would be associated with a longer duration of illness and poor executive function.
Conclusion
Patients with schizophrenia have a bias towards misattributing fearful and angry facial emotions, which increases with the duration of the disorder.
Supporting Evidence
- Patients were less accurate than controls in recognizing fearful and angry facial expressions.
- Fear-as-anger misattributions were predicted by a longer duration of illness and WCST perseverative errors.
- Patients made significantly more fear-as-anger misattributions compared to healthy controls.
Takeaway
People with schizophrenia sometimes confuse fear with anger when looking at faces, and this happens more the longer they've been sick.
Methodology
Outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (n=73) and healthy controls (n=30) performed a Facial Emotion Attribution Test and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.
Potential Biases
The study may be prone to selection bias as patients with better outcomes may not remain in contact with mental health services.
Limitations
The study's cross-sectional design may introduce selection bias, and the experimental paradigm did not include sad and disgust emotions.
Participant Demographics
Patients aged 18-65 with a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder; 73 patients and 30 healthy controls.
Statistical Information
P-Value
p<0.001
Statistical Significance
p<0.05
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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