title: Affective priming in schizophrenia with and without affective negative symptoms.
abstract: In the present study automatic perceptual sensitivity to facial affect information was examined in chronic schizophrenic patients. An affective priming task including subliminal and supraliminal presentations of sad and happy facial affect was administered to schizophrenia patients with a flat affect expression (n = 30), schizophrenia patients suffering from anhedonia (n = 30), schizophrenia patients not suffering from anhedonia or flat affect (n = 28), and a group of healthy controls (n = 30). Subjects had to judge valence of neutral Chinese ideographs. Anhedonic and flat affect patients but not patients without affect symptoms were found to be sensitive to negative facial affect on an automatic processing level. None of the schizophrenic patient groups but healthy controls showed a subliminal valence-congruent priming effect based on positive facial affect. Anhedonia as assessed by standardised psychiatric rating was related to a subliminal sensitivity to negative facial expression and a valence-inverted perception of positive facial expression. This pattern of results is largely consistent with predictions derived from Meehl's model of anhedonia. The aversive automatic perception of positive facial expression primarily found in anhedonic patients but also in schizophrenic control patients could lie in structural disturbances concerning the regulation of intimacy and distance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Münster, Albert-Schweitzer-Str. 11, 48149 Münster, Germany. Suslow@uni-muenster.de
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Suslow
authors.forename: Cornelia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Roestel
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Arolt
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003710:Demography; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011599:Psychopathology; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D013223:Statistics as Topic