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Objectives: Evidence suggests that emotional awareness--the ability to identify and label emotions--may be impaired in schizophrenia and related to positive symptom severity. Exposure to childhood maltreatment is a risk factor for both low emotional awareness and positive symptoms. Methods: The current investigation examines associations between a performance-based measure of emotional awareness, positive symptom severity, and childhood maltreatment exposure in 44 individuals with a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder and 48 healthy comparison participants using the electronic Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (eLEAS), Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Results: Patients demonstrated significant deficits in emotional awareness overall, which was true for both self and others. In patients, lower emotional awareness was significantly associated with more severe positive symptoms. Emotional awareness was significantly impaired in patients with schizophrenia with self-reported maltreatment exposure, relative to other groups. Severity of maltreatment was not significantly associated with emotional awareness or positive symptoms when looking continuously, and there was no significant indirect effect. Conclusion: These data suggest that emotional awareness impairments observed in schizophrenia may be exacerbated by exposure to childhood maltreatment, possibly putting individuals at greater risk for experiencing positive symptoms of psychosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Embodied emotions arise from interoceptive and somatosensory processes, and are essential to the development of a stable sense of self. Emotional embodiment is therefore inherently interwoven with our sense of bodily self-awareness, and allows us to navigate complex social situations. Given that the core feature of schizophrenia (SZ) is characterized by the presence of bodily self-disturbances and social-emotional deficits, we hypothesized that embodiment of emotion would be disrupted in SZ. Method Twenty-six medicated individuals with SZ and 26 demographically matched controls used a computerized topographical mapping tool ("EmBODY") to indicate on a body outline where they felt bodily sensations while experiencing an emotion. There were 13 different emotions plus a neutral state. The resulting bodily maps of emotions were quantitatively compared between groups using linear discriminant analysis and similarity scores. Results Bodily maps of emotions were anomalous in SZ as indicated by indistinguishable maps across different emotions. Relative to the control group, patients reported less discrete and less clear bodily sensations across emotions. In particular, bodily maps for low-arousal emotions were atypical in comparison with healthy controls. Conclusions Anomalous and undifferentiated mapping of embodied emotions in SZ could lead to deficits in linking bodily sensations to conceptual categories of emotions. Disrupted emotional embodiment could also contribute to poor social functioning. Abnormal bodily sensations of emotions might therefore be a promising target for future psychosocial interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Hypothesis: Exposure to childhood maltreatment-a risk factor for psychosis is associated with paranoia-may impact one's beliefs about the world and how beliefs are updated. We hypothesized that increased exposure to childhood maltreatment is related to volatility-related belief updating, specifically higher expectations of volatility, and that these relationships are strongest for threat-related maltreatment. Additionally, we tested whether belief updating mediates the relationship between maltreatment and paranoia., Study Design: Belief updating was measured in 75 patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and 76 nonpsychiatric controls using a 3-option probabilistic reversal learning (3PRL) task. A Hierarchical Gaussian Filter (HGF) was used to estimate computational parameters of belief updating, including prior expectations of volatility (μ03). The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) was used to assess cumulative maltreatment, threat, and deprivation exposure. Paranoia was measured using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the revised Green et al. Paranoid Thoughts Scale (R-GPTS)., Results: Greater exposure to childhood maltreatment is associated with higher prior expectations of volatility in the whole sample and in individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. This was specific to threat-related maltreatment, rather than deprivation, in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Paranoia was associated with both exposure to childhood maltreatment and volatility priors, but we did not observe a significant indirect effect of volatility priors on the relationship between maltreatment and paranoia., Conclusions: Our study suggests that individuals with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders who were exposed to threatening experiences during childhood expect their environment to be more volatile, potentially facilitating aberrant belief updating and conferring risk for paranoia., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center.)