title: Social cognition in schizophrenia and healthy aging: differences and similarities.
abstract: Social cognition is impaired in schizophrenia but it is not clear whether this is specific for the illness and whether emotion perception is selectively affected. To study this we examined the perception of emotional and non-emotional clues in facial expressions, a key social cognitive skill, in schizophrenia patients and old healthy individuals using young healthy individuals as reference. Tests of object recognition, visual orientation, psychomotor speed, and working memory were included to allow multivariate analysis taking into account other cognitive functions
  
  
  RESULTS
  Schizophrenia patients showed impairments in recognition of identity and emotional facial clues compared to young and old healthy groups. Severity was similar to that for object recognition and visuospatial processing. Older and younger healthy groups did not differ from each other on these tests. Schizophrenia patients and old healthy individuals were similarly impaired in the ability to automatically learn new faces during the testing procedure (measured by the CSTFAC index) compared to young healthy individuals.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Social cognition is distinctly impaired in schizophrenia compared to healthy aging. Further study is needed to identify the mechanisms of automatic social cognitive learning impairment in schizophrenia patients and healthy aging individuals and determine whether similar neural systems are affected.
authors.affiliation: Brain Behavior Laboratory, Sha'ar Menashe Mental Health Center, Mobile Post Hefer 37806, Israel; Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. Electronic address: mdsilver@tx.technion.ac.il.
authors.forename: Henry
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Silver
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. Electronic address: warren@upenn.edu.
authors.forename: Warren B
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Bilker
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012559:Schizophrenia; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012938:Social Perception
keywords: Cognitive decline; Emotion; Priming