William James Center for Research (WJCR-Aveiro), Department of Education and Psychology, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal; Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS@RISE), Department of Education and Psychology, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal.
Psychiatry Department, Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra, 3004-561 Coimbra, Portugal; Institute of Psychological Medicine, University of Coimbra, 3000-548 Coimbra, Portugal; CIBIT-Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research, University of Coimbra, 3000-548 Coimbra, Portugal; CACC-Clinical Academic Center of Coimbra, 3004-561 Coimbra, Portugal.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2023 Dec;81:101892. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2023.101892. Epub 2023 Jul 5.
Schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (SSD) are characterized by impaired emotion processing and attention. SSD patients are more sensitive to the presence of emotional distractors. But despite growing interest on the emotion-attention interplay, emotional interference in SSD is far from fully understood. Moreover, research to date has not established the link between emotional interference and attentional control in SSD. This study thus aimed to investigate the effects of facial expression and attentional control in SSD, by manipulating perceptual load.
Twenty-two SSD patients and 22 healthy controls performed a target-letter discrimination task with task-irrelevant angry, happy, and neutral faces. Target-letter was presented among homogenous (low load) or heterogenous (high load) distractor-letters. Accuracy and RT were analysed using (generalized) linear mixed-effect models.
Accuracy was significantly lower in SSD patients than controls, regardless of perceptual load and facial expression. Concerning RT, SSD patients were significantly slower than controls in the presence of neutral faces, but only at high load. No group differences were observed for angry and happy faces.
Heterogeneity of SSD, small sample size, lack of clinical control group, medication.
One possible explanation is that neutral faces captured exogenous attention to a greater extent in SSD, thus challenging attentional control in perceptually demanding conditions. This may reflect abnormal processing of neutral faces in SSD. If replicated, these findings will help to understand the interplay between exogenous attention, attentional control, and emotion processing in SSD, which may unravel the mechanism underlying socioemotional dysfunction in SSD.
精神分裂谱系障碍（SSD）的特征是情绪处理和注意力受损。SSD 患者对情绪干扰更为敏感。但是，尽管人们对情绪-注意相互作用的兴趣日益增加，但对 SSD 中的情绪干扰的理解还远远不够。此外，迄今为止的研究尚未建立 SSD 中情绪干扰与注意力控制之间的联系。因此，本研究旨在通过操纵感知负载来研究 SSD 中面部表情和注意力控制的影响。
22 名 SSD 患者和 22 名健康对照者在任务无关的愤怒、快乐和中性面孔的情况下执行目标字母辨别任务。目标字母出现在同质（低负载）或异质（高负载）分心字母之间。使用（广义）线性混合效应模型分析准确性和 RT。
无论感知负载和面部表情如何，SSD 患者的准确性明显低于对照组。关于 RT，在存在中性面孔的情况下，SSD 患者明显比对照组慢，但仅在高负载下。在愤怒和快乐的面孔中没有观察到组间差异。
SSD 的异质性、样本量小、缺乏临床对照组、药物治疗。
一种可能的解释是，中性面孔在 SSD 中更能吸引外源性注意力，从而在感知要求高的情况下挑战注意力控制。这可能反映了 SSD 中对中性面孔的异常处理。如果得到复制，这些发现将有助于理解 SSD 中外源性注意、注意力控制和情绪处理之间的相互作用，这可能揭示了 SSD 中社会情感功能障碍的机制。
