The REALE (Recognising Emotions and links to Life Experiences) Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The REALE (Recognising Emotions and links to Life Experiences) Study
IRAS ID
220792
Contact name
Elisabeth Pearse
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The University of Manchester
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
We hope to study how individuals with psychosis recognise emotions in the faces of others. Emotion recognition is a very important aspect of social cognition; which is the ability to understand people’s mental state and behaviours. Individuals with psychosis can have difficulty recognising emotions in the faces of others. Problems in recognising emotions in others can affect how people interact with others. Research has found that people with psychosis have reduced social interaction, which is strongly related to outcome for those individuals.
Difficulty in recognising emotions may result in individuals misunderstanding others. This could put people at risk of developing psychosis due to feeling suspicious or uncertain of others intentions. Paranoia often occurs in psychosis, and this can involve beliefs that others have the intention to cause harm. This belief can impact upon how a person interprets emotions in the faces of others.
Research has suggested that difficulty in recognising emotions in others can be due to genetic reasons (the expression of a person’s genes). However, other research suggests that early life experiences can impact how the ability to recognise emotions in the faces of others develops. Early trauma and abusive parenting has been found to be related to difficulty in recognising facial emotions in others. High levels of childhood adversity have been found in individuals with psychosis, including those with paranoia.
This study explores whether childhood trauma is related to increased difficulty in recognising emotions in others, and specifically if this difficulty then relates to social functioning and/or levels of paranoia within individuals with or without experience of psychosis. The study also explores whether emotion recognition ability is related to social functioning and/or levels of paranoia in people with and without experience of psychosis. It is hoped that this will aid the development of effective treatments for psychosis. We will be asking people with experience of psychosis to take part. People will be asked to complete questionnaires, interviews and experimental tasks.
REC name
North West - Liverpool Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/NW/0090
Date of REC Opinion
31 Mar 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion