Abstract

LUKASOVA, Katerina et al. The perception of facial expressions in people with schizophrenia: Eye movements, symptomatology and intelligence. PsicoUSF [online]. 2007, vol.12, n.1, pp.95-102. ISSN 1413-8271.

Analyses of the eye movement patterns of schizophrenics show some specific characteristics underlying the illness. The objective of present study was to evaluate and correlate basic properties of the eye movements with the clinical state and intelligence during the visual scan of faces. 10 outpatient subjects with schizophrenia and 10 controls matched in gender, age and school years were evaluated. The assessment tools were the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PNSS), the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test and the Penn Emotion Acuity Test. The visual scan was registered with the EyeGaze® program. Both groups showed more fixations for stimuli with emotional expression, with significantly smaller overall number of fixations for the schizophrenic subjects group. Duration of fixations was inversely correlated with score in the Raven Test, PANSS and number of fixations. The properties of the eye movements showed correlation with the clinical condition and intelligence of the outpatients with schizophrenia.

Keywords : Schizophrenia; Eye movements; Intelligence; Clinical state.

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