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Impairments in biological motion perception reflect affective disturbance in individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Social cognitive impairments are common in individuals at clinical high-risk (CHR) for psychosis. Emotion recognition, a key component of social cognition, has been extensively examined in the CHR population, primarily with facial emotion recognition tasks, which have consistently demonstrated impairments. However, we have a limited understanding of whether the perception of broad bodily movements, known as biological motion processing (BM), contributes to emotion recognition impairment in this population. All participants completed the Point Light Walker (PLW) task, a paradigm that isolates body movement, to assess performance on BM processing. This study included 63 participants (34 CHR, 29 healthy controls (HC)). Symptom severity and functioning was measured by the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes (SIPS), and the Negative Symptoms Inventory-Psychosis Risk (NSI-PR). Accuracy and response times (RTs) on the PLW were compared between groups using independent t -tests. Linear regressions were used to examine associations with symptom severity. CHR individuals showed reduced fear recognition ( p = 0.015), longer RTs when responding to videos depicting fear ( p = 0.022), and longer RTs for incorrect fear responses after controlling for sex ( p = 0.046). Alogia showed a positive trending association with BM emotion recognition ( p = 0.076), but performance did not otherwise relate to other symptoms. Additional analyses examined sex-specific patterns, revealing interaction effects for neutral accuracy and RTs to anger-related stimuli. These findings suggest that CHR individuals may experience subtle impairments in recognizing fear and processing threat/high-arousal emotions. Consequently, impaired BM recognition and processing of fear might serve as an early indicator of psychosis risk. • CHR individuals showed reduced accuracy identifying fear during BM tasks. • Slower response times to fear stimuli suggest processing delays in CHR participants. • Negative symptom alogia showed a trending association with BM accuracy. • Findings support BM recognition tasks as a potential early marker of psychosis risk.

Source: Schizophrenia Research Cognition

DOI: 10.1016/j.scog.2025.100401

Authors: Sophia N. Parmacek, Danielle N. Pratt, Vijay A. Mittal

Institution: Northwestern University

Language: English

Topic: Schizophrenia research and treatment

Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health

Field: Medicine

Domain: Health Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,130