High Order Linguistic Features Such as Ambiguity Processing as Relevant Diagnostic Markers for Schizophrenia

Abstract

Due to the deficits of schizophrenic patients regarding the understanding of vague meanings (D. Ketteler and S. Ketteler (2010)) we develop a special test battery called HOLF (high order linguistic function test), which should be able to detect subtle linguistic performance deficits in schizophrenic patients. HOLF was presented to 40 schizophrenic patients and controls, focussing on linguistic features such as ambiguity, synonymy, hypero-/hyponymy, antinomy, and adages. Using the HOLF test battery we found that schizophrenic patients showed significant difficulties in discriminating ambiguities, hypero- and hyponymy, or synonymy compared to healthy controls. Antonyms and adages showed less significant results in comparing both groups. The more difficult a linguistic task was, the more confusion was measured in the schizophrenic group while healthy controls did not show significant problems in processing high order language tasks.

Masked ambiguity – Emotion identification in schizophrenia and major depressive disorder

“…Specific impairments in patients with schizophrenia have been identified in tasks that employ the identification of emotions diverging from prototypical, basic expressions of emotion (Burch, 1995), such as subtle (Tremeau et al, 2015) and ambiguous emotions (Ketteler et al, 2012;Tsui et al, 2013). Tasks that use facial stimuli with (morphed) faces showing different degrees of emotional intensity have been proposed to aid the identification of differential deficits because of their ambiguous nature, leaving some room for a different interpretation (Huang et al, 2011;Moritz et al, 2012).…”

Irony and Proverb Comprehension in Schizophrenia: Do Female Patients “Dislike” Ironic Remarks?

“…The fact that irony is more often used in difficult stages of communication [ 9 , 16 , 19 ] is also relevant in the context of schizophrenic impairment. Since ironic remarks are ambiguous per se, irony comprehension also poses challenges to ambiguity resolution [ 20 , 21 ], which is a cognitive operation patients with schizophrenia are known to have difficulties with [ 22 – 24 ].…”

Cross-Cultural Aspects of Social Cognitive Abilities in Schizophrenia

“…The emotional ambi guity expressed by the mask, as well as the fact that it displays Asian features, makes the task a valuable instrument for application in groups of Western patients with schizophrenia. It is known that patients with schizophrenia have difficulties with the perception and interpretation of ambiguous stimuli in other domains as well (ambiguous verbal information; Ketteler et al, 2012). Moreover, compared with other facial emotion recognition tasks (e.g., those utilizing Ekman and Friesen faces (1976)), this task presents a nonhuman object.…”