Effects of facial expression and perceptual load on exogenous attention in schizophrenia: The special case of neutral faces

Schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (SSD) are characterized by impaired emotion processing. SSD patients are more sensitive to the presence of emotional distractors. Yet, no study has explored perceptual load effects on emotional interference in SSD. We thus aimed to investigate exogenous attention to facial expressions by means of perceptual load in SSD. Twenty-two SSD patients and 22 healthy controls (HC) performed a target-letter discrimination task with task-irrelevant angry, happy, and neutral faces. Target-letter were presented among homogenous (low perceptual load) or heterogenous (high perceptual load) distractor-letters. SSD patients were significantly slower than HC in the presence of neutral faces, but only at high perceptual load. We argued that neutral faces captured exogenous attention to a greater extent in SSD, thus challenging attentional control in perceptually demanding conditions. This provides new evidence into the interplay between exogenous attention, attentional control, and emotion processing in SSD, with implications for clinical practice.