Marcos-Pablos Samuel, González-Pablos Emilio, Martín-Lorenzo Carlos, Flores Luis A, Gómez-García-Bermejo Jaime, Zalama Eduardo
Cartif Foundation, Parque Tecnológico de Boecillo Valladolid, Spain.
Research Unit, Hermanas Hospitalarias Centro Sociosanitario Palencia Palencia, Spain.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2016 Aug 26;10:421. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00421. eCollection 2016.
Persons who suffer from schizophrenia have difficulties in recognizing emotions in others' facial expressions, which affects their capabilities for social interaction and hinders their social integration. Photographic images have traditionally been used to explore emotion recognition impairments in schizophrenia patients, but they lack of the dynamism that is inherent to facial expressiveness. In order to overcome those inconveniences, over the last years different authors have proposed the use of virtual avatars. In this work, we present the results of a pilot study that explored the possibilities of using a realistic-looking avatar for the assessment of emotion recognition deficits in patients who suffer from schizophrenia. In the study, 20 subjects with schizophrenia of long evolution and 20 control subjects were invited to recognize a set of facial expressions of emotions showed by both the said virtual avatar and static images. Our results show that schizophrenic patients exhibit recognition deficits in emotion recognition from facial expressions regardless the type of stimuli (avatar or images), and that those deficits are related with the psychopathology. Finally, some improvements in recognition rates (RRs) for the patient group when using the avatar were observed for sadness or surprise expressions, and they even outperform the control group in the recognition of the happiness expression. This leads to conclude that, apart from the dynamism of the shown expression, the RRs for schizophrenia patients when employing animated avatars may depend on other factors which need to be further explored.
患有精神分裂症的人在识别他人面部表情中的情绪方面存在困难，这影响了他们的社交互动能力，并阻碍了他们融入社会。传统上，摄影图像被用于探究精神分裂症患者的情绪识别障碍，但它们缺乏面部表情所固有的动态性。为了克服这些不便，在过去几年里，不同的作者提出使用虚拟化身。在这项工作中，我们展示了一项初步研究的结果，该研究探讨了使用逼真的化身来评估精神分裂症患者情绪识别缺陷的可能性。在该研究中，邀请了20名病程较长的精神分裂症患者和20名对照受试者识别由上述虚拟化身和静态图像展示的一组面部表情情绪。我们的结果表明，无论刺激类型（化身或图像）如何，精神分裂症患者在面部表情情绪识别方面都存在识别缺陷，并且这些缺陷与精神病理学有关。最后，观察到患者组在使用化身时对悲伤或惊讶表情的识别率（RRs）有所提高，甚至在识别快乐表情方面超过了对照组。由此得出结论，除了所展示表情的动态性之外，精神分裂症患者在使用动画化身时的RRs可能还取决于其他需要进一步探索的因素。
