title: Emotion recognition and social skills in child and adolescent offspring of parents with schizophrenia.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Emotion recognition, a social cognition domain, is impaired in people with schizophrenia and contributes to social dysfunction. Whether impaired emotion recognition emerges as a manifestation of illness or predates symptoms is unclear. Findings from studies of emotion recognition impairments in first-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia are mixed and, to our knowledge, no studies have investigated the link between emotion recognition and social functioning in that population.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study examined facial affect recognition and social skills in 16 offspring of parents with schizophrenia (familial high-risk/FHR) compared to 34 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HC), ages 7-19.
  
  
  RESULTS
  As hypothesised, FHR children exhibited impaired overall accuracy, accuracy in identifying fearful faces, and overall recognition speed relative to controls. Age-adjusted facial affect recognition accuracy scores predicted parent's overall rating of their child's social skills for both groups.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study supports the presence of facial affect recognition deficits in FHR children. Importantly, as the first known study to suggest the presence of these deficits in young, asymptomatic FHR children, it extends findings to a developmental stage predating symptoms. Further, findings point to a relationship between early emotion recognition and social skills. Improved characterisation of deficits in FHR children could inform early intervention.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychiatry , University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine , Pittsburgh , PA , USA.
authors.forename: Leslie E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Horton
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychiatry , University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine , Pittsburgh , PA , USA.
authors.forename: Miranda A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Bridgwater
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychiatry , University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine , Pittsburgh , PA , USA.|b VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System , Pittsburgh , PA , USA.
authors.forename: Gretchen L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Haas
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012559:Schizophrenia; D066107:Social Skills; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: High-risk; emotion recognition; facial affect recognition; schizophrenia; social skills