Running head: VISUAL AND EYE GAZE PROCESSING IN SCHIZOPHRENIA Basic Visual Functioning and Eye Gaze Processing in Schizophrenia: Relationship with Symptoms and Social Functioning by

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that is associated with misinterpretation of social signals. This study investigated how individuals with schizophrenia perceive social information differently from mentally healthy individuals in two experiments. In Experiment 1, 28 individual with schizophrenia and 24 healthy controls viewed a series of photos, each varying in emotion, head orientation, and gaze direction. The task was to judge whether the person in the photo was looking at them or not. It was hypothesized that individuals with schizophrenia would be more likely to perceive actors in the photos as looking at them at a higher rate than controls due to their tendency in perceiving self-referential signals. Individuals with schizophrenia were also expected to demonstrate more uncertainty in judgment due to their decreased categorical gaze perception. Both hypotheses were supported by the results. To investigate whether gaze perception dysfunction, if present, occurs at higher-level information processing (e.g. interpretation stage) or may be adequately explained by lower-level visual perception deficits. Same individuals completed the Contour Integration Task and Motion Coherence Task in Experiment 2 to measure their visual functioning in high-level integration and lower-level gain control, respectively. Basic visual perception was hypothesized to be impaired in schizophrenia, as exhibited by previous literature. Results only supported deficits in integration, but not in gain control. This study demonstrated that impaired visual integration significantly explained the abnormalities in categorical gaze perception and lower social-emotional functioning in schizophrenia.