Investigation of Emotional Expression Processing Following Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Patients with Schizophrenia: An Event-Related Potentials Study

Abstract

Growing evidence supports the use of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for psychosis, including CBT for voices (CBTv), which targets auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH). The present study observed the effects of CBTv on electrophysiological measures of facial expression processing in patients with schizophrenia with AVH. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia were randomly assigned to a treatment group (TG; n = 14) or a treatment as usual (TAU) group (n = 11). The TG received group CBTv for five-six months in addition to their TAU. The matched waitlist group received TAU for the five-six months. The CBTv treatment showed shorter P100 latency in response to facial expressions following treatment compared with baseline, but not the TAU group. Amount of negative content of voices and “omnipotence” of voices were modified following CBTv treatment, but not following TAU. This study provides evidence that CBTv decreases early visual information processing time as indexed by the P100 latency.