The syntactic role of pauses in the speech of schizophrenic patients with alogia.

Abstract

The common and specific symptom dimensions of anxiety and depression proposed by the tripartite (L.A. Clark & D. Watson, 1991 c) and cognitive (A.T. Beck, 1976, 1987) models were investigated in 844 psychiatric outpatients and 420 undergraduates. Principal-factor analyses with oblique rotations performed on the 42 items of the Beck Depression Inventory and Beck Anxiety Inventory for both samples revealed that there were 2 correlated factors. Depression and Anxiety. Second-order factor analyses of the interfactor correlation matrices indicated a large general distress or negative affect factor underlying the relationship between the 2 first-order factors. Specific depression and anxiety dimensions were apparent even after we controlled for negative affect. The results were consistent with both the tripartite and cognitive models, with the cognitive and motivational symptoms specific to depression and the physiological arousal symptoms unique to anxiety.

Cognitive correlates of schizophrenia signs and symptoms: I. verbal communication disturbances

“…The results of this study are not consistent with the hypothesis that poverty of speech in schizophrenia is due to word finding difficulties (e.g., Alpert et al, 1994). Performance on the word finding task was not associated with verbosity, even though it was significantly associated with disturbed discourse coherence.…”

“…Past research and theorizing on dynamic aphasia, along with the results of past research indicating that individuals with schizophrenia have a tendency to exhibit deficits in planning abilities, as measured using the Tower of London task (e.g., Morris et al, 1995;Kravariti et al, 2003), led us to hypothesize that reduced verbosity in schizophrenia is also influenced by a deficit in planning abilities. Another widely acknowledged hypothesis is that poverty of speech in schizophrenia is due to word finding difficulties (e.g., Alpert et al, 1994). Thus, one of the central goals of the present study was to examine which, if any, of these four cognitive processes (i.e., working memory, fluency, planning, and word finding) are associated with reduced quantity of speech in schizophrenia.…”

Distinct conflict resolution deficits related to different facets of Schizophrenia

“…For example, alogia has been found to be associated with increased between (but not within) clause pauses during speech (Alpert et al, 1994;Alpert et al, 1997). This seems generally consistent with a retrieval conXict deWcit (or speciWcally a selection deWcit; Badre & Wagner, 2007) as between-clause pauses presumably reXect relative diYculty of retrieving and selecting new content for ongoing speech.…”

Disordered Discourse in Schizophrenia Described by the Structure Building Framework

“…decreased speech production and flat affect)-pause more within clauses. Indeed, Alpert et al (1994) reported that the duration of withinclause pauses was the strongest predictor of alogia in schizophrenic subjects. A preliminary explanation (greatly in need of further empirical hypothesis testing) is that schizophrenics who exhibit verbose disordered discourse are impaired in their ability to shift from building one substructure to another (hence the greater pauses at clause boundaries), whereas schizophrenics who exhibit impoverished disordered discourse are impaired in their ability to map onto a developing substructure (hence the greater pauses within clauses).…”