title: Colour influences perception of facial emotions but this effect is impaired in healthy ageing and schizophrenia.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Social cognition is commonly assessed by identification of emotions in facial expressions. Presence of colour, a salient feature of stimuli, might influence emotional face perception.
  
  
  METHODS
  We administered 2 tests of facial emotion recognition, the Emotion Recognition Test (ER40) using colour pictures and the Penn Emotional Acuity Test using monochromatic pictures, to 37 young healthy, 39 old healthy and 37 schizophrenic men.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Among young healthy individuals recognition of emotions was more accurate and faster in colour than in monochromatic pictures. Compared to the younger group, older healthy individuals revealed impairment in identification of sad expressions in colour but not monochromatic pictures. Schizophrenia patients showed greater impairment in colour than monochromatic pictures of neutral and sad expressions and overall total score compared to both healthy groups. Patients showed significant correlations between cognitive impairment and perception of emotion in colour but not monochromatic pictures.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Colour enhances perception of general emotional clues and this contextual effect is impaired in healthy ageing and schizophrenia. The effects of colour need to be considered in interpreting and comparing studies of emotion perception. Coloured face stimuli may be more sensitive to emotion processing impairments but less selective for emotion-specific information than monochromatic stimuli. This may impact on their utility in early detection of impairments and investigations of underlying mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: a Brain Behavior Laboratory , Sha'ar Menashe Mental Health Center , Mobile Post Hefer 37806, Israel.|b Rappaport Faculty of Medicine , Technion Institute of Technology , Haifa , Israel.
authors.forename: Henry
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Silver
authors.affiliation: c Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology , University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia , PA , USA.
authors.forename: Warren B
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Bilker
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: context; emotion clues; emotion perception; monochrome