Impaired facial emotion perception in schizophrenia: a meta-analysis

Research into facial emotion perception in schizophrenia has burgeoned over the past several decades. The evidence is mixed regarding whether patients with schizophrenia have a general facial emotion perception deficit (a deficit in facial emotion perception plus a more basic deficit in facial processing) or specific facial emotion perception deficits (deficits only in facial emotion perception tasks). A meta-analysis is conducted of 28 facial emotion perception studies that include control tasks. These studies use differential deficit designs to examine whether patients with schizophrenia demonstrate a general deficit or specific deficit in facial emotion perception. A significant mean effect size is found for total facial emotion perception (d=-0.85). Patients with schizophrenia demonstrate impaired ability to perform corresponding control tasks, and the mean effect size is -0.70. The current findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia have moderately to severely impaired perception of facial emotion.