The role of attention in affect perception: An examination of Mirsky's four factor model of attention in chronic schizophrenia

Abstract

Attentional skills among people with schizophrenia may be related to deficits in affect perception. Such deficits can dramatically inhibit appropriate social functioning. We examined attention and affect perception in a sample of 65 people diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia. We used Mirsky's four factor model of attention to assess attentional functioning. To measure affect perception, we used two reliable measures of emotion recognition, the Bell-Lysaker Emotion Recognition Test and the Face Emotion Identification Test. Multiple regression analysis showed that all four attentional factors and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia were significantly predictive of affect perception scores. In contrast, psychiatric symptoms, medication levels, demographic variables, verbal fluency, and face recognition scores were not predictive of affect perception scores. The four factors of attention accounted for 78 percent of the variance in affect perception scores. These results emphasize the role that attentional abilities play in affect perception for people with schizophrenia.