Deictic Navigation Network: Linguistic Viewpoint Disturbances in Schizophrenia

Abstract

This paper introduces the Deictic Navigation Network, a cognitive-linguistic framework to analyze and clarify the nature of viewpoint disturbances in language, applied to schizophrenia. We argue that such disturbances have linguistic counterparts in the use of deixis: linguistic elements of which the interpretation relies on the situational context of the discourse and their connection to a subject-bound perspective. The DNN connects such linguistic phenomena to three viewpoint disturbances, which can manifest in different degrees of extremity: (i) the reduced capacity to recognize one’s own subjective perspective and the subjective perspectives of others; (ii) the reduced capacity to separate present perspectives from distinct past, future, and hypothetical perspectives; and (iii) the reduced capacity to integrate projected viewpoint structures into the actual here-and-now. We explain how application of the DNN to language in schizophrenia enables the localization of perspectivization disturbances and helps to clarify the nature of disturbances in the ability to build complex viewpoint structures in language as well as cognition.

Inferring Depression and Its Semantic Underpinnings from Simple Lexical Choices

“…Recent evidence based on the Demonstrative Choice Task (DCT) indicates that the coupling of proximal ("this") and distal ("that") spatial demonstrative forms with nouns is indicative of individuals' experienced/emotional proximity to the target word. Spatial demonstratives are among the few language universals [34], and most languages have at least two forms, a proximal and distal form, delineating both a physical, functional, and social distinction between peripersonal and extrapersonal space [35]. The usage of spatial demonstratives is thus indicative of the position of the speaker relative to the referent in both a physical and experiential (psychological) space in any given context [36,37]).…”

Inferring depression and its semantic underpinnings from simple lexical choices

“…Recent evidence based on the Demonstrative Choice Task (DCT) indicates that the coupling of proximal ("this") and distal ("that") spatial demonstrative forms with nouns is indicative of individuals' experienced/emotional proximity to the target word. Spatial demonstratives are among the few language universals [34] and most languages have at least two forms, a proximal and distal form, delineating both a physical, functional and social distinction between peripersonal from extrapersonal space [35]. The usage of spatial demonstratives is thus indicative of the position of the speaker relative to the referent in both a physical and experiential (psychological) space in any given context [36,37]).…”

Hallucinated and spoken linguistic patterns as markers of psychiatric disorders

“…Alternatively, compact-AVHs' linguistic features might arise from disruptions in generative circuits of language-related mechanisms (Brown and Kuperberg, 2015), which tallies with the observation that referential systems are disrupted in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (van Schuppen et al, 2019;Zimmerer et al, 2017). Çokal et al (2018) and Sevilla et al (2018) showed that speech of patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and formal thought disorder is characterized by aberrant use of definite, but not of indefinite articles.…”