ABSTRACT
Deficits in social functioning are especially severe amongst schizophrenia individuals with the prevalent comorbidity of social anxiety disorder (SZ&SAD). Yet, the mechanisms underlying the recognition of facial expression of emotions-a hallmark of social cognition-are practically unexplored in SZ&SAD. Here, we aim to reveal the visual representations SZ&SAD (n = 16) and controls (n = 14) rely on for facial expression recognition. We ran a total of 30,000 trials of a facial expression categorization task with Bubbles, a data-driven technique. Results showed that SZ&SAD's ability to categorize facial expression was impared compared to controls. More severe negative symptoms (flat affect, apathy, reduced social drive) was associated with more impaired emotion recognition ability, and with more biases in attributing neutral affect to faces. Higher social anxiety symptoms, on the other hand, was found to enhance the reaction speed to neutral and angry faces. Most importantly, Bubbles showed that these abnormalities could be explained by inefficient visual representations of emotions: compared to controls, SZ&SAD subjects relied less on fine facial cues (high spatial frequencies) and more on coarse facial cues (low spatial frequencies). SZ&SAD participants also never relied on the eye regions (only on the mouth) to categorize facial expressions. We discuss how possible interactions between early (low sensitivity to coarse information) and late stages of the visual system (overreliance on these coarse features) might disrupt SZ&SAD's recognition of facial expressions. Our findings offer perceptual mechanisms through which comorbid SZ&SAD impairs crucial aspects of social cognition, as well as functional psychopathology.
ABSTRACT
The Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Adults (SAQ) is a new social anxiety measure that attracts attention for its empirical development, validation with large samples and in multicultural contexts. The SAQ has shown adequate psychometric properties among clinical and non-clinical samples, from 20 different countries, including Spain, Portugal and most Latin American countries. To date however, this questionnaire has not been translated or validated in French. The aim of this study is to present the French version of the SAQ and analyze its psychometric properties in French Canadian and Belgian samples. The original version of the SAQ was translated into French. A total of 482 Canadian and Belgian non-clinical participants were recruited for this study. All participants were administered the French versions of the SAQ and the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS-SR). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated an adequate fit of the five-factor model. The internal consistency was excellent for the total score and very good for all dimensions, and the test-retest reliability was good for both the total score and all dimensions (over a 6-week period). An adequate convergent validity of the SAQ with the LSAS-SR was found. Differences between countries and gender in the SAQ were also examined, and small to medium effect sizes were noted in some scores. The French version of the SAQ demonstrated adequate reliability and validity in the evaluated samples
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