Can the psychiatrist learn from the psycholinguist? Detecting coherence in the disordered speech of manics and schizophrenics

Abstract

SYNOPSISIn general, linguistic analyses have not proved useful to psychiatrists because of their complexity and their inability to differentiate between diagnostic groups. However, cohesion analyses of disordered speech seem to offer both a simple and potentially useful tool for clinical diagnosis. This study was designed to test whether psychiatrists can use the rudiments of this analysis in order to differentiate between two diagnostic groups, manics and schizophrenics.

Communication deviance in families of schizophrenic and manic patients.

“…The pattern of results we observed in comparing schizophrenic and manic patients on the interactional CD measure is consistent with previous studies of thought disorder in schizophrenia and mania (e.g., Harvey, 1983; Hoffman, Stopek, & Andreasen, 1986; Holzman, Shenton, & Solovay, 1986; Solovay, Shenton, & Holzman, 1987; Wykes, 1981). In general, these studies have found that the two patient groups did not differ on overall levels of thought disorder, but several have noted differences on specific qualitative types of communication dysfunction.…”

The relationship between predisposing factors, premorbid function and symptom dimensions in psychosis: an integrated approach

“…psychiatrists considered the individual thought disordered; the gender difference may reflect the fact that the male brain is more vulnerable to developmental insult [4]. The evidence that mania and disorganisation have some shared aetiology may help to explain the difficulty that psychiatrists have in reliably distinguishing between manic and schizophrenic thought disorder [38].…”