M124. Perception of Socio-Emotional Information in Dynamic Gait in Inpatients With Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders

Background: The body is capable of signaling a multitude of states and dispositions to others before proximal interpersonal interaction is necessary. Decisions are made as to whether to approach or avoid someone before one can perceive the other individual’s face. How individuals with schizophrenia perceive and recognize these nonverbal, bodily signals is less well understood. To further elucidate the mechanisms underlying social cognitive deficits of schizophrenia, we presented dynamic “avatars” expressing a range of emotional and social traits and asked participants to identify them. Methods: Sixteen inpatients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum disorder and 16 demographically matched controls participated in the study. Participants completed 3 tasks in a randomized order. The Emotion Recognition Task presented 4 emotions (ie, happy, angry, sad, and neutral), the Gender Recognition Task presented male and female gaits, and finally, the Social Trait Judgments task required participants to rate the 6 avatars from the other 2 tasks on 4 social traits (ie, attractiveness, trustworthiness, approachability, and threat). Current symptomatology was assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (Kay, Fiszbein, & Opler, 1987). Results: Individuals with schizophrenia were significantly less accurate at identifying emotions ( F (1,30) = 15.79; P = .0004) and gender ( F (1,30) = 19.10; P < .0001) in the avatars’ gaits. Furthermore, they did not appear to take into account the emotional state of the avatar when judging it along several social dimensions (eg, approachability, threat). Specifically, inpatients rated the angry avatar as more approachable and the happy avatar as less approachable than the controls. These social judgments were significantly related to current symptomatology. Both the positive and negative symptom score aggregates of the PANSS were associated with a number of social trait ratings made by the patients. Conclusion: Therefore, individuals with schizophrenia do not appear to utilize socially relevant information (eg, emotional state) when making social judgments about others and this could contribute to the greater functional burden seen in this population.