VISUAL SCANNING OF FACES CORRELATES WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA SYMPTOMATOLOGY

1. The purpose of this study was to examine whether quantitative measu res of visual scanning of faces correlated with the severity of sympto ms in patients with schizophrenia. 2. Preattentive visual fixations (f ixations less than or equal to 50.1 ms in duration) were measured whil e 16 subjects with chronic schizophrenia and 38 comparison subjects sc anned slides of human faces. 3. A significant inverse correlation was found between the number of preattentive fixations exhibited during 10 seconds of facial scanning and total Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale ( BPRS) scores. 4. This study suggests that measures that probe preatten tive processing during scanning of faces could represent a novel parad igm for studying the symptoms of schizophrenia.