Affective pattern recognition and schizophrenia

The process by which people extract the emotional nuances of nonverbal communication is treated as a special case of pattern recognition. This process of affective pattern recognition is presumed to involve three conceptually distinct levels: The primary or cue level, the secondary or configurational level, and the propositional or predictive level. It is proposed that schizophrenia arises from defects in either or both the cue and configurational levels and that the hypothesized defects can account for the common cognitive and social-interpersonal phenomena of schizophrenia. Finally, the therapeutic implications of this model of schizophrenia are considered.