And medication doesn't seem to help them

May 19, 2006 12:19 GMT  ·  By
Researchers have shown that even people with mild forms of schizophrenia and who are under medication have difficulties in understanding body language. This creates an important social handicap for them, as people often, even unconsciously, use body posture and movement to convey additional meanings.

Previous studies had shown that patients with schizophrenia have trouble deciphering emotion from human facial expressions. Now scientists discovered that this is only a particular case, schizophrenics have difficulties with body language in general, not only with facial expressions.

"As we interact with people, we make judgments that we're not consciously aware of," said Sergio Paradiso, one of the researchers. "If we see a coworker hunched over and don't see his face, we may approach him cautiously because we think something might be wrong and perhaps we can help. We don't see the face, but we glean information from the body language. People with schizophrenia are not as good at extracting this kind of information to guide their social interactions."

The study included 14 people without schizophrenia and 20 people with schizophrenia who were taking medication and had mild to moderate symptoms. "Unfortunately, standard treatment for schizophrenia does not appear to be capable of improving perception that helps in being social with others," Paradiso said.

Scientists also found that a high level of intelligence did not improve the ability to perceive body language. "Many people with schizophrenia, including those who are very bright, remain awkward in social situations," he added.

In one test, in order to separate the ability to comprehend body language from other types of communication, the participants were shown a video of moving dots of light. The lights had been attached to the joints of the filmed people, but in the film only the lights were visible. Individuals with schizophrenia and healthy volunteers were asked to determine what emotions (such as joy or sadness) were depicted by the motion. While healthy individuals successfully recognized the emotions, individuals with schizophrenia could not accurately decipher them.

In another study, the participants were shown modified film clips of complex social scenes in which the actors' faces were erased. Then they were shown the same unmodified clips (with the faces visible). Researchers found that people with schizophrenia did not improve their performances in identifying the overall mood of the people in the scene.

"The film clip test showed that patients with schizophrenia have problems with both taking advantage of extra information that is conveyed by the human face and with deciphering socially relevant stimuli that are not conveyed by facial expression," Paradiso said.

Researchers now plan to examine more closely how various types of medication used to treat schizophrenia affects patients' social abilities.

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