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Affect recognition in people at clinical high risk of psychosis
Schizophrenia Research, 07/11/2012
Clinical Article
Addington J et al. – While poorer affect recognition may be associated with vulnerability for psychosis, the current results suggest that it may not be a marker of developing a psychotic illness.
Methods- The sample consisted of 172 CHR and 100 help-seeking individuals (HS) who were followed for up to 24months.
- All CHR individuals met the Criteria of Prodromal Syndromes (COPS) based on the Structured Interview for Prodromal Symptoms (SIPS).
- The SIPS was used to determine conversion to psychosis.
- Affect recognition was assessed using two facial affect recognition tasks and a measure of affective prosody.
- In comparison to previously published data from non-psychiatric controls, both CHR and HS groups demonstrated deficits in affect recognition.
- By 2years 25 CHR participants converted to psychosis.
- Interestingly, there were no differences between converters and non-converters on any affect recognition tasks.
- This is one of the first studies to longitudinally examine affect processing and its relationship to later conversion to psychosis in individuals at–risk for psychosis.