Aims: 

Observe the influence of anxiety, evaluated with the Spielberger anxiety-feature scale (1993), on the emotional recognition within a population of 14 schizophrenic patients and 7 control subjects.

Methods: 

We subdivided the population of subjects in three groups according to the anxiety score obtained (1: control, 2: moderate anxiety, 3: strong anxiety). Participants were confronted with a visual face-detection task, in which they had to detect deviant faces amongst a train of standard stimuli (neutral faces). Deviant faces changed either on identity (different identity, neutral expression), or on emotion (same identity, happy, fearful or sad expression).

Results: 

Anxiety influences, for all deviant stimuli, the amplitude of the P100 (F: 8.95; sig: 0.002), N170 (F: 7.26; sig: 0.005), P300 (F: 6.95; sig: 0.006) and the N400 (F: 5.519; sig: 0.014). With regard to latency, anxiety slows down data processing for all deviant stimuli on the P100 (F: 5.38; sig: 0.015) and P300 (F: 6.151; sig: 0.009). On the N170 component, we observed an increased latency only for fear (F: 7.691; sig: 0.004). Finally, we observe a laterality effect and an anxiety-deviant stimuli interaction.

Conclusion: 

ERP results suggest that anxiety has an influence on each stage of the emotional treatment.