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Updated: Mar 26, 2026

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
Face perception in schizophrenia: a specific deficit
1a Department of Psychological Sciences, College of Education , Qatar University , Doha , Qatar.
Introduction:
Patients with schizophrenia have a large-scaled and severe cognitive impairment. This study examines whether a well-established deficit in face recognition in schizophrenia is a part of this general cognitive impairment or is specific to faces per se.
Method:
The differential deficit in matching upright faces as compared with two psychometrically matched control tasks (matching inverted faces and matching none-face objects) was assessed in two well-matched samples of schizophrenics (n = 40) and controls (n = 40).
Results:
Indicating a generalised cognitive deficit, schizophrenics were impaired in all tasks. Importantly, however, the deficit in matching upright faces was stronger in magnitude (15.6%) than the deficits in matching inverted faces (10.1%) and non-face objects (10.2%). Consistently, schizophrenics showed weaker face inversion effects, indicating a configural processing dysfunction.
Conclusion:
These results provide compelling evidence for a face-specific deficit in schizophrenia that may be associated with, but separable from, a generalised cognitive impairment.
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