Misattribution of Emotional Over-Arousal to Neutral Faces in Acute Paranoid Schizophrenia Psychosis.

Abstract

SummaryIntroduction: Misattribution of motivational salience to non-salient (neutral) stimuli could be viewed as a hallmark of psychosis in schizophrenia. Studies have recently revealed increased subjective experience of emotional arousal (EA) to neutral social stimuliin paranoid schizophrenia psychosis, suggesting a misattribution of emotional salience to them. We examined this phenomenon directlyby quantifying the level of EA subjectively attributed to low-arousal, neutral-valenced faces.Subjects and Methods: A task for EA attribution to neutral (in the context of affective) facial expressions was applied to 44actively psychotic paranoid schizophrenia inpatients and 44 well-matched healthy controls.Results: Psychotic patients, compared with healthy controls, rated the neutral faces as more aroused (t (86) = 3.15, p =.001) thusmisattributing emotional salience to them.Discussion: This finding supports the hypothesis that over-assignment of EA to neutral faces could be viewed as a subclinicalaffective mechanism of the clinically manifested experience of delusional perception.Conclusion: The study provides the first direct empirical evidence for misattribution of emotional salience in terms of over-attribution of EA to neutral faces during acute paranoid schizophrenia psychosis.