Flattening of affect and personal constructs

The perception of emotion by schizophrenic patients

Studies which have examined the perception of emotion by schizophrenic patients have produced conflicting results, an outcome which may, in part, be due to difficulties in presenting a realistic portrayal of emotion. This study exposed 32 schizophrenic patients in remission and ten controls to five videotaped scenes of emotional situations played by actors. The schizophrenic patients were divided into three groups, namely those living with high-EE relatives, those living with low-EE relatives and those living alone, in order to test the hypothesis that patients in a high-EE environment are less able to identify emotionally charged situations. Measures of electrodermal activity and self-ratings of tension were recorded concomitantly. The schizophrenic patients in all groups were as adept at identifying emotions as were the controls. There was no difference between the groups in electrodermal activity and subjective tension for all video scenes, except for the one which portrayed the only pleasant interaction; the high-EE group was significantly more aroused on both measures, which were independent of each other.

Schizophrenics and social judgement. Why do schizophrenics get it wrong?

Videotaped social interactions were shown to a population of schizophrenics and controls who were asked to comment on the emotional state of the principal protagonist. Their free responses were subjected to a content analysis to examine which of three possible explanations of known schizophrenic inaccuracies on this task were responsible: formal thought disorder, selective avoidance of psychological factors, or perceptual/attentional deficits. Neither selective avoidance nor marked thought disorder were found to explain these errors. The schizophrenics as a group rated much the same, irrespective of clinical profile. Their judgements of personality were less clear-cut than the controls.

Schizophrenia and the perception of emotions. How accurately do schizophrenics judge the emotional states of others?

Audiovisual tapes of emotional situations were shown to 34 schizophrenics and 15 controls who were asked to rate the emotional content of the scenes using an adjective check-list. The schizophrenic patients failed to detect the dominant character of the scenes, and perceived the opposite emotions to those perceived by the controls. Such deviant responses were not related to paranoid symptoms, flattened affect, formal thought disorder, general level of morbidity, or duration of in-patient stay.

Affective pattern recognition and schizophrenia

The process by which people extract the emotional nuances of nonverbal communication is treated as a special case of pattern recognition. This process of affective pattern recognition is presumed to involve three conceptually distinct levels: The primary or cue level, the secondary or configurational level, and the propositional or predictive level. It is proposed that schizophrenia arises from defects in either or both the cue and configurational levels and that the hypothesized defects can account for the common cognitive and social-interpersonal phenomena of schizophrenia. Finally, the therapeutic implications of this model of schizophrenia are considered.

Speed of function, thought-process disorder and flattening of affect

Retardation, i.e. abnormal slowness in performing mental and/or motor tasks, is frequently noted as being a prominent feature of schizophrenia. While some writers describe it as being merely one of the several clinical signs and symptoms of schizophrenia, others suggest that retardation has a causative role, and is a basic disorder underlying antisociability and withdrawal from reality (Babcock, 1933), intellectual deficit (Shapiro and Nelson, 1955), affective flattening (Harris and Metcalfe, 1956), thought-process disorder (e.g. Yates, 1966), and other disorders.

'Psychological' constructs and 'psychological' symptoms in schizophrenia

The constructs (Kelly, 1955) which individuals use when describing other people may be classified as ‘psychological’, i.e. those referring to the personality and emotional state of the people, or as ‘objective’, i.e. those referring to their physical characteristics, social class, clothing etc.