Twenty-three schizophrenic subjects and 19 controls completed selected neuropsychological tests of frontal and temporal lobe function and a subgroup of subjects completed a series of tests to assess receptive and expressive aspects of social communication. This was to examine the relationship between deficits of receptive social communication and deficits of temporal lobe function, and deficits of expressive social communication and deficits of frontal lobe function. Schizophrenic subjects were significantly impaired compared to normal control subjects on measures of social communication. Normal performance on a word recognition task contrasted with impaired performance on a face recognition task. No clear pattern of relationships between neuropsychological tests of regional brain function and receptive or expressive social communication emerged. A stepwise logistic regression analysis generated three factors which discriminated between the two groups of subjects; two of these factors were measures involving the information conveyed in a human face.