Comparison of visual perceptual organization in schizophrenia and body dysmorphic disorder.

People with schizophrenia are impaired at organizing potentially ambiguous visual information into well-formed shape and object representations. This perceptual organization (PO) impairment has not been found in other psychiatric disorders. However, recent data on body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), suggest that BDD may also be characterized by reduced PO.

Processing of spatial-frequency altered faces in schizophrenia: effects of illness phase and duration.

Low spatial frequency (SF) processing has been shown to be impaired in people with schizophrenia, but it is not clear how this varies with clinical state or illness chronicity. We compared schizophrenia patients (SCZ, n = 34), first episode psychosis patients (FEP, n = 22), and healthy controls (CON, n = 35) on a gender/facial discrimination task. Images were either unaltered (broadband spatial frequency, BSF), or had high or low SF information removed (LSF and HSF conditions, respectively).

Effects of short-term inpatient treatment on sensitivity to a size contrast illusion in first-episode psychosis and multiple-episode schizophrenia.

Introduction: In the Ebbinghaus illusion, a shape appears larger than its actual size when surrounded by small shapes and smaller than its actual size when surrounded by large shapes. Resistance to this visual illusion has been previously reported in schizophrenia, and linked to disorganized symptoms and poorer prognosis in cross-sectional studies. It is unclear, however, when in the course of illness this resistance first emerges or how it varies longitudinally with illness phase.