Forming first impressions of others in schizophrenia: Impairments in fast processing and in use of spatial frequency information

Abstract

Individuals form first impressions of others all the time, which affects their social functioning. Typical adults form threat impressions in faces with neutral expressions quickly, requiring less than 40 ms. These impressions appear to be mediated by low spatial frequency (LSF) content in the images. Little is known, however, about mechanisms of first impression formation in schizophrenia. The current study investigated how quickly individuals with schizophrenia can form consistent impressions of threat compared with controls and explored the mechanisms involved. Patients and controls were presented intact, LSF- or high spatial frequency (HSF)-filtered faces with durations that varied from 39 to 1703 ms and were asked to rate how threatening each face was on a scale from 1 to 5. In order to assess the speed of impression formation for intact faces, correlations were calculated for ratings made at each duration compared to a reference duration of 1703 ms for each group. Controls demonstrated a significant relation for intact faces presented for 39 ms, whereas patients required 390 ms to demonstrate a significant relation with the reference duration. For controls, LSFs primarily contributed to the formation of consistent threat impressions at 39 ms, whereas patients showed a trend for utilizing both LSF and HSF information to form consistent threat impressions at 390 ms. Results indicate that individuals with schizophrenia require a greater integration time to form a stable “first impression” of threat, which may be related to the need to utilize compensatory mechanisms such as HSF, as well as LSF, information.

Introduction

People with schizophrenia have deficits across a number of social cognitive domains including facial emotion recognition, theory of mind, and social perception (Green et al., 2008, Kohler et al., 2010, Savla et al., 2013). These impairments affect ability to engage in social interactions and are related to poor functional outcome (Couture et al., 2006, Fett et al., 2011, Irani et al., 2012). One important area of social functioning is the ability to make spontaneous judgments about an individual's personality characteristics or perceived intent based on facial information. However, there is a paucity of studies examining mechanisms by which individuals with schizophrenia form first impressions.

Frequently, individuals form first impressions of others' traits and characteristics to determine how threatening, trustworthy, intelligent, likeable, attractive, or competent they are. First impressions can be made based on emotional expressions in faces, facial structure, and even subtle expressions in neutral faces (Hassin and Trope, 2000, Oosterhof and Todorov, 2008, Said et al., 2009). This process is spontaneous, based on limited information, and, regardless of accuracy, can affect social interactions and behavior (Willis and Todorov, 2006, Olivola and Todorov, 2010).

Additionally, some judgments, particularly those of threat and trustworthiness, may be crucial for survival. Thus, one would expect these judgments to be made very quickly, which turns out to be the case. In two similar studies, ratings of threat (Bar et al., 2006) and trustworthiness (Todorov et al., 2009) made by healthy individuals after exposure to neutral faces in as short a duration as 33–39 ms agreed with ratings made at more leisure. Whether patients with schizophrenia need longer durations of viewing faces than controls to make a first impression remains an open question. Studies showing that patients need longer exposure durations to achieve configural processing of faces similar to that of controls (Butler et al., 2008) and have increased reaction time when making social appraisals (Taylor et al., 2011) suggest that this may be the case.

Little is known about mechanisms used to form first impressions, even in healthy individuals. Bar et al. (2006) assessed the role of spatial frequency content in first impression formation because low spatial frequency (LSF, low resolution) information is extracted much more rapidly than high spatial frequency (HSF, fine detail) information, providing coarse-to-fine processing of information (Bar, 2003). Furthermore, LSF information involves neural circuitry implicated in threat perception (Adolphs et al., 1999, Vuilleumier et al., 2003). As hypothesized, LSF processing played a role in first impression formation: a significant relationship was found between threat judgments made from LSF-filtered faces, but not HSF-filtered faces, shown for 39 ms and judgments made from unfiltered faces. Some studies show that patients with schizophrenia exhibit impairment in processing LSF information in objects, faces, and simple stimuli (O'Donnell et al., 2002, Butler et al., 2005, Martinez et al., 2008, Silverstein et al., 2010, Martinez et al., 2011, Calderone et al., 2013). Other studies found impairment in processing both LSF and HSF information (Slaghuis, 1998, Keri et al., 2002). Thus, patients may not utilize spatial frequency, particularly LSF information, similarly to controls in forming first impressions.

Given the impact of first impressions and difficulties in social cognition of patients with schizophrenia, it is important to understand the mechanisms of first impression formation. The present study utilized the paradigm of Bar et al. (2006) to investigate the possibility that patients need longer duration and utilize different mechanisms than healthy controls to form first impressions. Specifically, it was hypothesized that controls would be able to quickly form a consistent first impression that would be reliant on the use of LSF information. It was hypothesized that patients with schizophrenia would take longer to make a stable first impression and require HSF as well as LSF information to do so.