Abstract

The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate how schizophrenic patients conceptualize emotion terms and judge facial expressions in order to understand the nature of their affective disturbance. In Study 1, 19 schizophrenic patients between the ages of 19 and 46 were given 105 pairs of emotion terms and asked to rate their similarity using a 7 point scale. Multidimensional Scaling Analysis of the similarity data revealed a one-dimensional model with the pleasant-unpleasant dimension for the schizophrenic group, while a two-dimensional model(pleasant-unpleasant and arousal) has been consistently reported for normal adults and children. In Study 2, 31 schizophrenic patients and 30 college students were presented with 28 photographed faces with various emotional expressions and asked to rate each of them on the arousal and pleasant-unpleasant dimension. The results indicated that schizophrenic patients tend to underevaluate the level of arousal and unpleasantness of the emotions expressed in the faces, particularly when the emotions expressed are negative and of high arousal. The low sensitivity of schizophrenic patients to the arousal dimension is consistent with Mednick`s hypothesis which suggests that schizophrenic patients tend to avoid high arousal stimulus for fear that it might further stimulate their already highly aroused autonomic nervous system.