Taking It at “Face Value”: The Use of Face Processing Strategies in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia

Abstract

To our knowledge, this is the first study to explicitly examine and contrast face processing in BD and SZ. Our findings indicate a generalized impairment on face processing tasks in SZ, and the presence of a second-order configural face processing impairment in BD. It is possible that these face processing impairments represent a catalyst for the facial emotion recognition deficits that are commonly reported in the literature. (JINS, 2016, 22, 652-661).

Configural and Featural Face Processing Influences on Emotion Recognition in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

“…BD<SZ CPZe = chlorpromazine equivalents; PANSS = Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Note that this data has been presented in our previous report (Joshua et al, 2016) and is re-presented here to enable clarity for the reader.…”

“…This study should be considered in the context of the same limitations that beset our previous report, which includes an inability to control for medication effects due to the varied medications used in the current sample and an absence of the explicit assessment of manic symptom severity (see Joshua et al, 2016 for further details). Past research has also shown differences in emotion perception performance between BD patients with and without a psychosis history (Thaler et al, 2013).…”

“…Demographic and clinical characterization of this sample is reported in our previous work (Joshua et al, 2016) and re-presented in Table 1. Two multivariate analyses of variance with post hoc Sidak tests were carried out to examine between-group differences in performance on the whole-face and eyes-only conditions in terms of both accuracy and response time.…”

“…Healthy face processing requires both part-based (featural) and holistic (configural) face processing strategies; the former refers to use of local featural information and the latter to holistic processing of spatial relationships between features (Maurer, 2002). Recently, using a non-emotional face processing paradigm, we showed that patients with Sz had impairments in both strategies, whereas BD patients were impaired only in featural processing (Joshua, Van Rheenen, Castle, & Rossell, 2016). The influence on facial emotion recognition was not assessed in this work.…”

“…We are aware of no studies in BD that have focused attention on this aim, despite the potential implications that findings from such studies could have for the development of emotion recognition remediation programs. In this study, we address this paucity of literature in a follow-up analysis to our previous face-processing work, using the same cohorts of Sz and BD patients that demonstrated either generalized (Sz) or specific (BD) non-emotional face processing impairments compared to controls (Joshua et al, 2016). Here, we report the results of an emotion recognition paradigm using stimuli designed to encourage or to inhibit the use of configural face information in whole or part-based conditions, respectively.…”