Emotion Recognition in First-Episode Schizophrenia

Individuals with schizophrenia experience problems in the perception of emotional material; however, the specificity, extent, and nature of the deficits are unclear. If emotion recognition deficits are a feature of schizophrenia, and if these deficits represent vulnerability-linked impairments, then they should be apparent in a stabilised first-episode sample. Edwards and her colleagues examined facial affect and affective prosody recognition in representative samples of individuals with first-episode psychosis, assessed as outpatients during the recovery phase of illness. Findings supported highly significant differences for the schizophrenia group as compared to affective psychoses and nonpatients in fear/sadness recognition across both communication channels. For validation purposes, the fear/sadness deficit should to be replicated; and the trait status of the fear/sadness deficit needs to be explored. A series of emotion recognition studies are now underway at the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre, Melbourne, Australia (EPPIC; www.eppic.org.au). However, there is a need to: (i) test the cross-site and cross-cultural robustness of the fear/sadness recognition deficit by using the emotion recognition stimuli in countries other than Australia, and (ii) examine the performance of non-affected first degree relatives of individuals with schizophrenia, as recent family studies have suggested that there may be a genetic component to emotional processing. The applicant proposes to investigate the performance of young people with first-episode schizophrenia attending the University Hospital for Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry, Vienna, on the emotion recognition tasks used at EPPIC. Friends of young people attending the clinic would be recruited as normal controls. Non affected parents and siblings of patient group would also be invited to participate. Results of this study would contribute towards a knowledge base to improve emotion recognition skills in individuals recovering from schizophrenia and related psychoses