Reading body and face language in male schizophrenia

Neurotypical people are generally quite adept at interpreting social signals from dynamic bodies and faces. This ability prevents one from incurring high costs associated with ineffective and maladaptive social interactions. Individuals with mental disorders, such as schizophrenia (SZ), often exhibit deficits in nonverbal social cognition. It remains unclear whether reading the language of bodies and faces is affected by SZ, and if this is indeed the case, how these potential deficits are related to one another. In the present study, participants (28 males with SZ and 28 typically developing, TD, matched controls) were administered face-to-face computer tasks on inferring emotions from dynamic point-light body motion and faces. The outcome indicates that SZ patients exhibit global impairments in both body and face reading, albeit patients demonstrate a similar emotion recognition profile as TD controls. In SZ patients only, a positive link was found between accuracy of recognizing emotions expressed through faces and bodies, whereas processing speed of emotions conveyed through bodies and faces was tied to each other in both SZ and TD individuals. For SZ patients, inferring social signals from dynamic faces and bodies may be rather challenging in terms of neurocognitive mechanisms, which is reflected in the tight link in recognition accuracy. Along with previous data on inferring emotions in the eyes collected in the same cohort, this work provides novel insights into the specific global aberrations in social cognition in SZ and offers a blueprint for the development of strategies for the targeted treatment of gender-specific mental disorders.