Alexithymia and the Recognition of Facial Emotion in Schizophrenic Patients

Noh, Jin Chan; Park, Sung Hyouk; Kim, Kyung Hee; Kim, So Yul; Shin, Sung Woong; Lee, Kounseok

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
Schizophrenic patients have been shown to be impaired in both emotional self-awareness and recognition of others' facial emotions. Alexithymia refers to the deficits in emotional self-awareness. The relationship between alexithymia and recognition of others' facial emotions needs to be explored to better understand the characteristics of emotional deficits in schizophrenic patients.
METHODS
Thirty control subjects and 31 schizophrenic patients completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20-Korean version (TAS-20K) and facial emotion recognition task. The stimuli in facial emotion recognition task consist of 6 emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and neutral). Recognition accuracy was calculated within each emotion category. Correlations between TAS-20K and recognition accuracy were analyzed.
RESULTS
The schizophrenic patients showed higher TAS-20K scores and lower recognition accuracy compared with the control subjects. The schizophrenic patients did not demonstrate any significant correlations between TAS-20K and recognition accuracy, unlike the control subjects.
CONCLUSIONS
The data suggest that, although schizophrenia may impair both emotional self-awareness and recognition of others' facial emotions, the degrees of deficit can be different between emotional self-awareness and recognition of others' facial emotions. This indicates that the emotional deficits in schizophrenia may assume more complex features.