Individuals with schizophrenia experience problems in the perception of emotional
material; however, the specificity, extent, and nature of the deficits are unclear.
Facial affect and affective prosody recognition were examined in representative samples
of individuals with first-episode psychosis, assessed as outpatients during the early
recovery phase of illness, and non-patients. Perception tasks were selected to allow
examination of emotion category results across face and voice modalities. Facial tasks
were computerised modifications of the Feinberg et al. procedure (Feinberg, T.E.,
Rifkin, A., Schaffer, C., Walker, E., 1986. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 43, 276--279). Prosody
tasks were developed using four professional actors, and item selections were based
on responses of undergraduates. Participant groups did not differ in their understanding
of the words used to describe emotions. Findings supported small but consistent deficits
in recognition of fear and sadness across both communication channels for the combined
schizophrenia (n=29) and other psychotic disorders (n=28) groups as compared to the
affective psychoses (n=23) and non-patients (n=24). A diagnostic effect was evident
that was independent of the contribution of intelligence. The detection of emotion
recognition impairments in first-episode schizophrenia suggests a trait deficit. The
pattern of results is consistent with amygdala dysfunction in schizophrenia and related
psychoses.