Deficits in facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia: a replication study with korean subjects.
OBJECTIVE
We investigated the deficit in the recognition of facial emotions in a sample of medicated, stable Korean patients with schizophrenia using Korean facial emotion pictures and examined whether the possible impairments would corroborate previous findings.


METHODS
Fifty-five patients with schizophrenia and 62 healthy control subjects completed the Facial Affect Identification Test with a new set of 44 colored photographs of Korean faces including the six universal emotions as well as neutral faces.


RESULTS
Korean patients with schizophrenia showed impairments in the recognition of sad, fearful, and angry faces [F(1,114)=6.26, p=0.014; F(1,114)=6.18, p=0.014; F(1,114)=9.28, p=0.003, respectively], but their accuracy was no different from that of controls in the recognition of happy emotions. Higher total and three subscale scores of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) correlated with worse performance on both angry and neutral faces. Correct responses on happy stimuli were negatively correlated with negative symptom scores of the PANSS. Patients with schizophrenia also exhibited different patterns of misidentification relative to normal controls.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings were consistent with previous studies carried out with different ethnic groups, suggesting cross-cultural similarities in facial recognition impairment in schizophrenia.
Department of Psychiatry, Kyungpook National University School of Medicine, Daegu, Korea.
Seung Jae
SJ
Lee
Hae-Kook
HK
Lee
Yong-Sil
YS
Kweon
Chung Tai
CT
Lee
Kyoung-Uk
KU
Lee
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