Individuals suffering from schizophrenia reveal difficulties in the recognition of emotional states experienced by other people. Deficits in facial - affect perception tend to be greater for negative facial displays than the positive one, with impairment being greatest for the perception of fear.

The aim of the current study was to investigate the role of semantic satiation of faces in the deficit arising in fear recognition. Semantic satiation is defined as the experience of the loss of the meaning of words or images caused by their prolonged presentation. The satiation effect occurs faster in schizophrenia than in healthy people since it could be considered as a mechanism which reveals patients’ difficulties in fear recognition.

Participants, 30 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and 30 controls were shown the images of fearful, happy and neutral faces. In satiation conditions each image was displayed 30 times, in control conditions - 3 times. Participants’ task was to define the emotion they were presented with.

Both groups of participants revealed the semantic satiation effect alike for positive, negative and neutral faces. Within the group of patients the satiation effect was greater for fearful and neutral faces than for positive ones, whereas for the healthy controls the satiation of positive and negative pictures were greater than for the neutral ones.

Within the schizophrenic group semantic satiation could be considered as a mechanism which is responsible for the difficulties of fear recognition and for deficits of correct interpretation of emotionally - neutral faces.