Face emotion processing deficits in schizophrenia: identification and remediation utilising visual scanpath technology

Social cognition deficits in schizophrenia are now widely accepted as both a core feature of the condition and an area lacking effective treatment regimes. The aim of this thesis was to explore novel strategies for the remediation of one aspect of social cognition, namely face emotion processing. Visual scanpath technology was utilised to first characterise the nature and extent of face emotion processing dysfunction in a schizophrenia sample. Second, the association of scanpath impairment with other measures of basic visual processing was explored and finally a novel remediation strategy targeting face emotion recognition in schizophrenia was developed and evaluated.