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Query: UMLS:C0036341 (schizophrenia)
 60,220 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

In order to examine the effects of irrelevant distracting information on speech disorder, medicated (n = 13) and unmedicated (n = 18) schizophrenics were compared to a mixed affective sample (n = 15) on the frequencies of linguistic measures of verbal communication disorder. Patients conversed with an interviewer during the presence and absence of irrelevant information inserted into their conversation. Affective patients manifested no distraction-related increase in communication disorder. Schizophrenics on medication manifested a small, but nonsignificant, increase in communication disorders during the concurrent distraction condition. Unmedicated schizophrenics manifested a substantial increase in their communication disorders during distraction. These data suggest that medication reduces the extent to which speech processes in schizophrenia are vulnerable to overload-related deterioration and provide confirmation of the hypothesis that some component of positive thought disorder in schizophrenia is due to medication-responsive attention deficits.
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PMID:Effect of concurrent distraction on communication failures in schizophrenic patients. II. Medication status correlations. 168 91

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is the major dopaminergic (DA) center responsible for the innervation of the prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, and entorhinal region. These areas have been causally implicated in schizophrenia. Thus, the existence of brainstem pathology could explain many of the previously reported findings in schizophrenic (SC) patients. The authors focus on uncovering brainstem abnormalities in schizophrenia by studying the autopsied material of a patient having an early onset of symptomatology. The patient was evaluated at the age of 10 years for manneristic behavior, a speech disorder, and violence. Prominent auditory hallucinations became apparent years later. His mental status and ability for self-care steadily deteriorated until he succumbed to pneumonia at age 22. Microscopic examination of the brain showed central chromatolysis of neurons and mild gliosis in a restricted distribution of the brainstem and thalamus. Cell loss and cytoarchitectural disruption were evident in the frontal lobes, prepyriform cortex, and entorhinal region. The neuropathological changes were interpreted as a chronic derangement in the function of neurons of the rostral brainstem tegmental area and medial thalamus with secondary involvement of their terminal projection sites.
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PMID:Neuropathological findings in a suspected case of childhood schizophrenia. 213 91

Lanin-Kettering and Harrow (1985) argue the traditional position that schizophrenia is a thought disorder. Chaika and Lambe (1985) counter that it is a speech disorder at the syntactic-discursive level, and not a thought disorder. On the basis of state-of-the-art research in linguistics, it is suggested that the symptoms of schizophrenia are evidence of neither a thought disorder nor a syntactic-discursive disorder but a semiotic disorder. Semiotic structures have the form of saying something about something to someone and involve speech act, reference, pragmatics, and interpretation. Therefore, it appears that schizophrenic disorder is located in this structure.
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PMID:Schizophrenia as a semiotic disorder. 396 24

The present study examined a prominent symptom subtype conception of the psychopathology of schizophrenia. It analysed the presumed dichotomy between hallucinations, delusions and formal thought disorder as positive symptoms and flattening of affect and poverty of speech as negative symptoms, and tested predictions concerning the nature of the mediating processes of positive and negative symptoms. Four different analyses were applied to the transcripts of speech produced by 9 normals, 10 chronic schizophrenics with only positive symptoms of whom 7 had incoherence of speech, and 9 chronic schizophrenics with only negative symptoms of whom 4 had poverty of speech. The conception of the nature of the mediating processes of positive and negative symptoms was not supported by the results. Further, a clear dichotomy between positive and negative symptom groups was not shown to exist, because positive speech disorder and negative speech disorder did not follow the presupposed dichotomy. Thus, contrary to existing conceptions of speech disorder in schizophrenia, both positive and negative speech disorder are marked by poverty of thought, as measured by the production of fewer and shorter ideas and lower speech variability.
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PMID:Do positive symptom and negative symptom subtypes of schizophrenia show qualitative differences in language production? 666 95

This research provides empirical data relevant to the long-standing theoretical issue of whether disordered speech in schizophrenia should be viewed as a speech disturbance or a thought disorder. The study analyzed whether schizophrenia patients with disordered speech on one test also show strange nonverbal behavior and unrealistic ideas on other assessments. One hundred eighty-four patients, including 55 schizophrenia patients, were assessed at the acute phase and followed up twice, over 4.5 years. Patients were assessed (1) with a standardized measure that can elicit disordered speech, (2) with a different measure that can elicit an atypical sorting of objects and an intermingling of personal ideas, and (3) for delusions (unrealistic thinking). Schizophrenia patients with disordered speech on the Proverbs Test also (1) sorted objects strangely on the Object Sorting Test (P <.05), (2) showed an intermingling of personal ideas into their thinking (P <.01), and (3) had delusional ideas when assessed at two successive follow-ups over a multiyear period (P <.001). The data suggest that most schizophrenia patients and other psychotic patients with disordered speech also show strange nonverbal behavior and unrealistic ideas/beliefs. These data support a theoretical framework in which disordered speech in schizophrenia and other types of psychotic patients is viewed as not just due to a speech disorder, but is often part of a broader constellation that includes gross reality distortions, strange behavior and ideas, and disordered thinking.
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PMID:Disordered verbalizations in schizophrenia: a speech disturbance or thought disorder? 1450 95

This article posits that basic cognitive impairments in schizophrenia are more highly related to speech disorder measured as communication failures than speech disorder measured as thought disorder or disorganization. The author tested 47 schizophrenia patients and 36 control participants for sustained attention, sequencing, and conceptual sequencing ability. Their speech was also rated for communication failures, thought disorder, and conceptual disorganization. Attention and sequencing impairments, examined hierarchically, explained a substantial 38% of the variance in the communication measure of speech disorder but little of the variance in formal thought disorder or conceptual disorganization. The author concludes that (a) impairments in attention and sequencing abilities contribute substantially to schizophrenic communication failures, and (b) it is important to consider lower level cognitive "3rd variables" when examining higher level cognitive associates of speech disorder.
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PMID:Cognitive impairments and disordered speech in schizophrenia: thought disorder, disorganization, and communication failure perspectives. 1586 57

Speech disorder exacerbates when negative affect is aroused in patients with schizophrenia. However, little is known about the effects of positive affect on speech disorder. A well-validated laboratory procedure was used to determine whether arousal of positive affect would modulate speech disorder in 57 stable outpatients with schizophrenia and 48 community controls. Overall, the level of speech disorder modulation was negligible for both groups, although there was considerable variability in whether patients' speech disorder exacerbated or ameliorated. Results suggest that arousal of positive affect has an ameliorative effect on speech disorder for certain patients who have relatively severe symptomatology.
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PMID:Effects of positive affect on speech disorder in schizophrenia. 1631 8

Speech disturbances (SD) are a pernicious symptom of schizophrenia that increase when negative emotion is elicited. This increase is referred to as affective reactivity (AR). Although considerable research has examined SD in schizophrenia, few studies have investigated this symptom in individuals at risk for the disorder, who demonstrate schizophrenia-like, or schizotypic, traits. In the present study, we examined: (1) SD severity in schizotypy, (2) how SD varies as a function of stress reactivity in schizotypy, and (3) the relationship between SD/AR with Quality of Life (QOL). Individuals with psychometrically-defined schizotypy (n=83) and controls (n=22) completed a laboratory procedure in which they produced speech while viewing pleasant and stressful photographs. This speech was analyzed for subtle speech disorder using a well-validated measure. We found that the schizotypy group demonstrated significant increases in SD across both baseline and stressful conditions compared to the control group. AR was not significantly different between the groups. Within the schizotypy group, severity of disorganized schizotypy symptoms was associated with high levels of SD and AR while interpersonal schizotypy was associated with low levels of SD and AR. AR was also related to increased objective QOL in the schizotypy group. This study highlights the role of stress reactivity across the schizophrenia-spectrum. Moreover, the incongruous relationships between disorganized and interpersonal symptoms with SD underscore the marked heterogeneity in processes across schizotypy.
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PMID:Affective reactivity of speech disturbances in schizotypy. 1961 90

The negative symptoms of schizophrenia have been considered to be a psychiatric form of the frontal lobe syndrome. However, no studies have compared these two disorders at the clinical level. In this study, 12 negative symptom schizophrenic patients and 11 patients with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bv-FTD) were rated for negative symptoms and for occurrence of frontal lobe behaviours in everyday life. They were also rated for speech disorder and were given a series of executive tests. Both patient groups showed positive ratings on negative symptoms and frontal lobe behaviours in daily life; however, the schizophrenic patients had higher negative symptom scores and the bv-FTD patients had higher carer ratings on frontal behaviours in daily life. Both groups were impaired on the executive tests, but the bv-FTD patients showed significantly greater impairment on verbal fluency and a test requiring inhibition of prepotent responses. A minority of the bv-FTD patients unexpectedly showed speech abnormalities typically associated with schizophrenia. The findings indicate that the negative syndrome in schizophrenia and the frontal lobe syndrome resemble each other clinically in important respects. Some of the differences may be attributable to the additional presence of disinhibition in the frontal lobe syndrome.
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PMID:Negative schizophrenic symptoms and the frontal lobe syndrome: one and the same? 2071 84

Speech of people with schizophrenia is often difficult to follow. There is evidence that neuropsychological deficits associated with schizophrenia explain some of the variance in speech disorder, but its nature and causes overall are not well understood. This study rated speech samples from 60 schizophrenic outpatients for thought disorder, conceptual disorganization, linguistic structural breakdown, and communication failure. A battery of neuropsychological tests potentially relevant to coherent speech production was administered, and associations between these variables and the speech measures were assessed. Consistent with previous research, the measure of functional effect, communication failure, was more highly associated with neuropsychological test performance than were the measures of putative cause: thought disorder, conceptual disorganization, or linguistic structural breakdown. Performance on tests of attention, immediate memory, working memory, organizational sequencing, and conceptual sequencing all were significantly related to the frequency of communication failures in the speech. In hierarchical regression, attention, working memory, and conceptual sequencing each contributed significantly and together explained 29% of the variance. Some other potential contributors to test in future research include auditory attention, internal source memory, emotional disturbances, and social cognitive deficits.
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PMID:On identifying the processes underlying schizophrenic speech disorder. 2156 41


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