The effect of limited cognitive resources on communication disturbances in serious mental illness

Abstract

Semantically incoherent speech is a pernicious clinical feature of serious mental illness (SMI). The precise mechanisms underlying this deficit remain unclear. Prior studies have found that arousal of negative emotion exaggerates the severity of these communication disturbances; this has been coined “affective reactivity”. Recent research suggests that “cognitive reactivity” may also occur, namely reflecting reduced “on-line” cognitive resources in SMI. We tested the hypothesis that communication disturbances manifest as a function of limited cognitive resources in SMI above and beyond that associated with state affectivity. We also investigated individual differences in symptoms, cognitive ability, and trait affect that may be related to cognitive reactivity. We compared individuals with SMI (n=52) to nonpsychiatric controls (n=27) on a behavioral-based coding of communication disturbances during separate baseline and experimentally-manipulated high cognitive-load dual tasks. Controlling for state affective reactivity, a significant interaction was observed such that communication disturbances decreased in the SMI group under high cognitive-load. Furthermore, a reduction in communication disturbances was related to lower trait and state positive affectivity in the SMI group. Contrary to our expectations, limited cognitive resources temporarily relieved language dysfunction. Implications, particularly with respect to interventions, are discussed.

Predicting self-injurious thoughts in daily life using ambulatory assessment of state cognition

“…In sum, "fluid" cognitive abilities reflect an individual difference variable that fluctuates within individuals over time. At any given time, "fluid" cognitive abilities can mitigate inefficient or unhelpful allocation of resources, such as self-injurious attentional AMBULATORY ASSESSMENT OF COGNITION AND SELF-INJURIOUS THOUGHTS 13 biases or preservative thoughts, or limit the resources available for other tasks, such as effective emotion regulation (Grillon, Quispe-Escudero, Mathur, & Ernst, 2015;Le, Najolia, Minor, & Cohen, 2017).…”

Multimodal assessment of communicative-pragmatic features in schizophrenia: a machine learning approach

“…More recently, this definition has also included the use of other expressive means such as non-verbal/extralinguistic modalities, e.g., gestures and body movements, and paralinguistic cues, e.g., prosody and tone of voice 4 . Schizophrenia is associated with a specific language impairment 5 – 7 . Patients’ difficulties refer to different levels of language processing, ranging from phonological aspects to word and semantic production 8 – 10 .…”

The Ability of Patients With Schizophrenia to Comprehend and Produce Sincere, Deceitful, and Ironic Communicative Intentions: The Role of Theory of Mind and Executive Functions

“…Typically, the studies in the literature have focused on the ability of patients with schizophrenia to use language (e.g., Linscott, 2005; Moro et al, 2015; Thanh et al, 2017; Corcoran et al, 2018; Pauselli et al, 2018), while non-verbal, extralinguistic and paralinguistic modalities have been generally overlooked (see Cohen et al, 2014; Parola et al, 2018, 2019b). However, Colle et al (2013) assessed the ability of individuals with schizophrenia to comprehend and produce different types of pragmatic phenomena, such as direct and indirect communicative acts, deceit and irony, and investigated extralinguistic and paralinguistic modalities in addition to language.…”