Schizophrenia Linked to Difficulty Reading Emotions from Faces and Body Language
A small study from Germany suggests that men with schizophrenia may have broader difficulties interpreting nonverbal emotional signals than healthy people. Researchers at the University of Tübingen compared 28 men diagnosed with schizophrenia or related disorders with 28 healthy men of a similar age; participants were about 32 years old on average. Most patients had paranoid schizophrenia, while eight had schizoaffective disorder, and nearly all were taking medication.
The participants viewed point-light displays, in which moving white dots represented either a face or a walking body without showing ordinary facial features, clothing or body shape. In the body task, 15 dots depicted a figure walking in either an angry or emotionally neutral manner across 144 trials. In the face task, 50 dots represented happy or angry expressions across 108 trials. Participants had to identify the emotion as accurately and quickly as possible.
The men with schizophrenia performed worse and responded more slowly on both tasks. They identified facial emotions correctly about 59% of the time, compared with 76% among healthy men. For body movements, accuracy was about 55% in the schizophrenia group and 63% in the control group, with 50% representing random guessing. The largest difference appeared in the face task. Both groups found body movements harder to interpret, particularly angry walking. Among the men with schizophrenia, stronger performance in reading body emotions was associated with better performance on faces, a relationship not seen in the healthy group.
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