Recognizing Faces, 5

Specific mental challenges appear to impact face and emotion perception. Take schizophrenia for example. When asked to match faces, remember faces, and recognize which emotions are present in a face, individuals with schizophrenia demonstrate worse accuracy and slower response time. Schizophrenia patients are able to easily identify a happy facial affect but struggle to identify faces as sad or fearful. Furthermore, the severity of schizophrenia symptoms has been found to correlate with the severity of impairment in face perception. Impairments in face and emotion perception are linked to impairments in social skills, due to the individual's inability to distinguish facial emotions Individuals with diagnoses of both schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder have been found to have even more impairment in face and emotion perception (as compared with individuals with just schizophrenia). These individuals have been found to struggle to identify anger, surprise, and disgust. There is also a link between aggression and emotion perception difficulties for people with this dual diagnosis. More tomorrow.