Emotion-related perceptual decision-making associated with severity of paranoia

Abstract

Emotion recognition impairments are well established in schizophrenia population, however previous research investigating the specific effects of paranoia trait and symptom on facial expression recognition (FER) have yielded mixed results. The current study aimed to investigate the effect of spatial frequency on perceptual decision-making in FER of anger and happy and the effect of paranoid trait and state on FER of anger and happy in general population. One-hundred-and-one healthy individuals participated in a FER experiment and completed self-reported questionnaires on paranoia symptoms and schizotypal personality traits via online platform. In general, participants performed the best on stimuli with broad spatial frequency (BSF), followed by high spatial frequency (HSF) then low spatial frequency (LSF). FER advantage for happy expression was observed with more correctly identified happy expression and shorter reaction time. Results showed that participants with higher level of positive schizotypal traits recognized less happy expression from HSF stimuli and had more varied reaction time when deciding between anger and neutral expression for LSF stimuli of different emotion salience. No significant interaction effect was found between FER task performance and severity of paranoia symptoms. These findings suggest that FER abnormality in recognizing both positive and threat-related expression may relate to the disturbances in the parvocellular pathway and the shift towards reliance on top-down processing in psychosis-prone individuals, rather than the severity of paranoia symptoms.