Although Schizophrenia (SCZ) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) share impairments in emotion recognition, the mechanisms underlying these impairments may differ. The current study used the novel "Emotions in Context" task to examine how the interpretation and visual inspection of facial affect is modulated by congruent and incongruent emotional contexts in SCZ and ASD. Both adults with SCZ (n= 44) and those with ASD (n= 21) exhibited reduced affect recognition relative to typically-developing (TD) controls (n= 39) when faces were integrated within broader emotional scenes but not when they were presented in isolation, underscoring the importance of using stimuli that better approximate real-world contexts. Additionally, viewing faces within congruent emotional scenes improved accuracy and visual attention to the face for controls more so than the clinical groups, suggesting that individuals with SCZ and ASD may not benefit from the presence of complementary emotional information as readily as controls. Despite these similarities, important distinctions between SCZ and ASD were found. In every condition, IQ was related to emotion-recognition accuracy for the SCZ group but not for the ASD or TD groups. Further, only the ASD group failed to increase their visual attention to faces in incongruent emotional scenes, suggesting a lower reliance on facial information within ambiguous emotional contexts relative to congruent ones. Collectively, these findings highlight both shared and distinct social cognitive processes in SCZ and ASD that may contribute to their characteristic social disabilities.

Background Negative symptoms in schizophrenia are related to impaired functioning. The presence of negative symptoms in early phases of psychosis in individuals at clinical risk is receiving increased attention. Methods We evaluated comprehensively a sample of 92 young people (age range 15–25) applying the Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms (CAINS), adapted for youth. Individuals at clinical high risk (CHR, n=29) were compared to individuals with schizophrenia (SZ, n=31) and normal controls (NC, n=32). In addition to the CAINS, participants were assessed with the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes (SIPS), enabling examination of the relations among scales, as well as the Penn Computerized Neurocognitive battery (CNB), to examine association with cognitive performance, and the Global Assessment of Function (GAF) to assess overall functioning. Results The CHR group was intermediate to SZ and NC on nearly all clinical measures. Negative symptoms on the CAINS correlated better with negative than with other symptoms on the SIPS and were associated with neurocognitive deficits and poorer functioning. Conclusions This study illustrates the feasibility of in-depth evaluation of negative symptoms in youth and indicates that these symptoms are present already in the at-risk state and relate to impaired cognition and functioning.

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Motivation and pleasure deficits are common in schizophrenia, strongly linked with poorer functioning, and may reflect underlying alterations in brain functions governing reward processing and goal pursuit. While there is extensive research examining cognitive and reward mechanisms related to these deficits in schizophrenia, less attention has been paid to psychological characteristics that contribute to resilience against, or risk for, motivation and pleasure impairment. For example, psychological tendencies involving positive future expectancies (e.g., optimism) and effective affect management (e.g., reappraisal, mindfulness) are associated with aspects of reward anticipation and evaluation that optimally guide goal-directed behavior. Conversely, maladaptive thinking patterns (e.g., defeatist performance beliefs, asocial beliefs) and tendencies that amplify negative cognitions (e.g., rumination), may divert cognitive resources away from goal pursuit or reduce willingness to exert effort. Additionally, aspects of sociality, including the propensity to experience social connection as positive reinforcement may be particularly relevant for pursuing social goals. In the current review, we discuss the roles of several psychological characteristics with respect to motivation and pleasure in schizophrenia. We argue that individual variation in these psychological dimensions is relevant to the study of motivation and reward processing in schizophrenia, including interactions between these psychological dimensions and more well-characterized cognitive and reward processing contributors to motivation. We close by emphasizing the value of considering a broad set of modulating factors when studying motivation and pleasure functions in schizophrenia.