The relationship between affect expression and affect recognition in schizophrenia

Abstract To examine the relationship between affect expression and affect recognition, we assessed 30 clinically stable, medicated schizophrenic inpatients. Affect expression was assessed using both a standard clinical rating scale (SANS) and a computerized acoustic voice analysis (VOXCOM). Affect recognition was assessed using the Florida Affect Battery (FAB). The schizophrenics' performance on the FAB was impaired, indicating broad deficits in affect recognition ( p p =0.001), suggesting that raters' impression of inappropriate affect may indicate a failure in the process of affect attunement.