title: Facial emotion recognition in patients with schizophrenia and their siblings.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Deficits in recognition of facial emotions have been widely reported in patients with schizophrenia. Previous studies that examined recognition of facial emotions in relatives of patients with schizophrenia brought out inconsistent results.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  In this study, we aimed to examine facial emotion identification and discrimination abilities in patients with schizophrenia and their healthy siblings to find out whether familial vulnerability to schizophrenia is associated with deficits in facial emotion recognition.
  
  
  METHODS
  Patients with schizophrenia (n=57), their unaffected biological siblings (n=58) and healthy controls (n=58) were included in the study. The three groups did not differ significantly for gender, age and education level. All the participants were evaluated with the Facial Emotion Identification Test (FEIT) and Facial Emotion Discrimination Test (FEDT).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Patients with schizophrenia performed significantly worse than controls on FEIT and FEDT. Siblings performed significantly better than patients and significantly worse than controls on FEIT and FEDT.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Impaired performance of siblings on facial emotion identification and discrimination tasks provides evidence for the hypothesis that facial emotion recognition deficits are transmitted in families and may represent a heritable endophenotype of schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: Clinic of Psychiatry, Ataturk Education and Research Hospital, Izmir, Turkey. aerol@superonline.com
authors.forename: Almila
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Erol
authors.forename: Levent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mete
authors.forename: Ipek
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Sonmez
authors.forename: Elif Keles
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Unal
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D010054:Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale; D019260:Expressed Emotion; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D035781:Siblings