Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by severe impairments in many aspects of daily living. Individuals with schizophrenia often suffer from deficits in social functioning (e.g., social awareness and interpersonal relationships). Recent research indicates that social cognition is an important determinant of disability in schizophrenia, and has therefore become a promising new treatment target for intervention. Social cognition is multifaceted. Although the majority of research on social cognition in schizophrenia has focused on the ability to recognize facial expressions in others, this is only a small part of emotional processing. The purpose of this study is to determine whether improvements in emotional processing (including emotion recognition, emotional expression, understanding emotion, and managing emotion) can be achieved in individuals with schizophrenia and how improvement is related to reduced disability. To accomplish this I will implement a novel non-verbal training (NVT) program to supplement a previously validated face affect recognition tool (FRT). One group will receive only the validated FRT tool, and the other group will receive a combined FRT and NVT program. I hypothesize that both groups will improve on measures of emotion recognition, but that only the combined FRT and NVT group will show improvements across all four levels of emotional processing. Impairment in emotional processing is linked to problems in interpersonal relationships, lower levels of social competence, and problems in adaptive functioning (Couture, Penn, & Roberts, 2006). Therefore, improving emotional processing can lead to improved social functioning and a better quality of life for persons with the disorder. Findings from this research project can bring to light a new, efficient, and easy-to-implement treatment program that can be used to improve the quality of life of persons with schizophrenia.