Brinkman Loek, Dotsch Ron, Zondergeld Jelmer, Koevoets Martijn G J C, Aarts Henk, van Haren Neeltje E M
department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
University Medical Centre Utrecht Brain Centre, dept of Psychiatry, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Schizophr Res Cogn. 2019 Apr 6;17:100138. doi: 10.1016/j.scog.2019.100138. eCollection 2019 Sep.
Schizophrenia patients have difficulties recognizing emotional states from faces, in particular those with negative valence, with severe consequences for daily life. What do these patients see in their minds eye, when they think of a face expressing a particular emotion or trait? The content of such mental representations can shed light into the nature of their deficits, but are usually inaccessible. For the first time, we explored the applicability of reverse correlation, which has been successfully used to visualize mental representations in healthy populations, to visualize mental representations in schizophrenia patients. We investigated mental representations of trustworthy faces, a primary dimension of social face evaluation that is highly correlated with valence. Patients ( = 23) and healthy controls ( = 34) classified images of noise-distorted faces as 'trustworthy', 'untrustworthy' or 'neutral'. We visualized their mental representations of these concepts by averaging the noise patterns based on their classifications. These visualizations were then rated on trustworthiness by an independent sample of participants. Patients were able to perform the reverse correlation task, with response times and biases similar to those of healthy controls, and the obtained images vividly reflected the respective constructs of interest. However, there were no significant differences between the ratings of the visualizations of patients and controls. Conclusion: These novel findings provide a proof of principle that the reverse correlation technique can be applied to investigate mental representations in schizophrenia patients.
精神分裂症患者在从面部识别情绪状态方面存在困难，尤其是识别具有负性效价的情绪状态，这对日常生活造成严重影响。当这些患者想到一张表达特定情绪或特征的脸时，他们脑海中看到的是什么？这种心理表征的内容可以揭示他们缺陷的本质，但通常难以获取。我们首次探索了反向关联的适用性，该方法已成功用于可视化健康人群的心理表征，以可视化精神分裂症患者的心理表征。我们研究了值得信赖的面孔的心理表征，这是社会面孔评价的一个主要维度，与效价高度相关。患者（n = 23）和健康对照者（n = 34）将噪声扭曲的面孔图像分类为“值得信赖”、“不值得信赖”或“中性”。我们通过根据他们的分类对噪声模式进行平均来可视化他们对这些概念的心理表征。然后，由独立的参与者样本对这些可视化图像的可信度进行评分。患者能够完成反向关联任务，反应时间和偏差与健康对照者相似，并且获得的图像生动地反映了各自感兴趣的结构。然而，患者和对照者的可视化图像评分之间没有显著差异。结论：这些新发现提供了一个原理证明，即反向关联技术可用于研究精神分裂症患者的心理表征。
