Judgement of Emotional Expression in Schizophrenics

Acute schizophrenics, chronic schizophrenics, psychiatric controls and patients with a depressive illness were asked to judge which of two faces in photographs was the more friendly. Acute schizophrenics disagreed significantly with the other three groups of subjects whilst agreeing with them on a control task of perceptual judgement involving colours. In a second experiment a new group of acute schizophrenics disagreed with remitted psychotics and psychotic depressives in judging friendliness and meanness but agreed with these control groups in judging age of the faces. The findings are presented as a potentially fruitful area for research on psychological deficits in schizophrenia.