Facial emotion recognition and alexithymia in Chinese male patients with deficit schizophrenia

Deficit schizophrenia (DS) has been proposed as a pathophysiologically distinct schizophrenia subtype. This study investigated facial emotion recognition deficits and alexithymia in DS and non-deficit schizophrenia patients (NDS) and their relationships with other clinical variables. The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS), and Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS) were employed to evaluate the psychiatric symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Facial emotion recognition deficits and Alexithymia were assessed in DS, NDS, and control groups by The Chinese Facial Emotion Test (CFET) and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20). Compared with control group, both DS and NDS patients exhibited more severe facial emotion recognition impairments, with the exception of “happy faces” in NDS patients, as well as higher alexithymia scores. In DS patients, correct frequency for fear recognition and total CFET score were negatively correlated with TAS-20 Factor 3 subscore for “externally oriented thinking”. Total TAS-20 score was positively correlated with BPRS negative symptom and SANS score in DS patients. In contrast, there were no correlations between TAS-20 scores/subscores and psychiatric symptoms in NDS patients. These findings indicated distinct facial emotion recognition impairments in DS and NDS patients. Alexithymia might be specifically related to the negative symptom in DS patients, suggesting DS as a unique schizophrenic subtype.