An intact threat superiority effect for nonsocial but not social stimuli in schizophrenia

Studies examining the processing of threat-related information in schizophrenia suggest that patients may show intact abilities to detect nonsocial threats despite impaired processing of social threat. The present study examined potential differences between social and nonsocial threat detection abilities in schizophrenia via two analogous threat perception tasks: one that used nonsocial threat (i.e., snakes) and one that used social threat (i.e., angry faces). Both tasks have reliably demonstrated a threat superiority effect (TSE) among healthy individuals in which threat-related stimuli are detected more accurately and efficiently than non-threat-related stimuli. Results from 30 healthy controls and 35 individuals with schizophrenia indicated that control participants showed a normative TSE on both the nonsocial and social tasks. In contrast, patients showed a TSE on only the nonsocial task, demonstrating intact detection abilities for nonsocial threat but impaired detection of social threats. The discrepant performance across nonsocial and social threat detection tasks within the patient group is consistent with evidence indicating that social and nonsocial information processing can be differentially affected in schizophrenia.