Emotion recognition latency, but not accuracy, relates to real life functioning in individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis

Emotion recognition deficits are essential features of psychotic disorders and the ultra-high risk state of psychosis (UHR), that are known to relate to functional outcome. The potential associations between aspects of emotion recognition deficits and functioning are, however, understudied in UHR individuals. Emotion recognition accuracy and latency were assessed in 132 UHR individuals and 60 healthy controls using the CANTAB emotion recognition task along with multiple measures of real life functioning. Multiple regression analyses assessed the potential relations between emotion recognition accuracy, latency, and measures of functioning. A consistent finding was that emotion recognition latency, but not accuracy, was associated with the four observer-rated measures of functioning (β in the range −1.57 to −16.20), which remained significant on one measure after controlling for neurocognitive processing speed. Neither emotion recognition accuracy, nor latency related to real life functioning in healthy controls. The results suggest that processing speed of social cognitive information is an important correlate to real-life functioning in UHR individuals which may be a relevant target in social cognitive remediation programs for patients at risk for psychosis.