Schizophrenics' and College Students' Preference for and Judgment of Schizophrenic Versus Normal Humorous Captions

Abstract

The present study investigated schizophrenics' and college students' preference for and judgment of humor samples written by schizophrenics and normals. Twenty male hospitalized schizophrenics and 20 male undergraduate college students ranked from most to least funny two sets of captions that had been previously written by an independent group of 10 college students and 10 schizophrenics. In addition, all subjects identified which captions they thought were written by college students and which by schizophrenics. The schizophrenic judges ranked the schizophrenic captions significantly more humorous than the student judges did. Student judges found the student captions significantly more humorous than the schizophrenic judges found them. When presented with both schizophrenic and student captions, however, all 40 subjects found the student captions significantly more humorous than the schizophrenic captions. Schizophrenic judges were not significantly better than student judges in the identification of schizophrenic captions. Student judges, however, were significantly better judges of "normal" humor than schizophrenic judges were.

Higher order language impairments can predict the transition of ultrahigh risk state to psychosis—An empirical study

“…Our present observations, that is, that metaphor explanation (picture metaphor explanation and written metaphor explanation) and effectiveness of communication are impaired in the converter group, are difficult to compare with those of relevant studies; nevertheless, they remain in line with observations of UHR individuals, patients with first‐episode schizophrenia (FE) (Pawełczyk et al, 2017), and people with schizophrenia with longer duration of the illness (Docherty, Hall, & Gordinier, 1998; Kuperberg, 2010a; Kuperberg, 2010b; Kuperberg et al, 1998; Pawelczyk et al, 2019; Pawełczyk et al, 2017). Also, the humour comprehension disturbances observed in UHR participants are consistent with those seen in people with schizophrenia (Corcoran et al, 1997; Pawelczyk et al, 2019; Rosin & Cerbus, 1984). These consistent results might reflect the neurodevelopmental nature of schizophrenia (Weinberger, 2017) since they show the presence of some pragmatic disturbances both at the time when no symptoms of schizophrenia are apparent and later, when the psychosis is fully developed.…”

“…Previous studies have implied that higher level language functions such as metaphor processing and discourse comprehension are disturbed in people with schizophrenia (Kuperberg, 2010a; Kuperberg, 2010b; Pawelczyk et al, 2019; Pawełczyk et al, 2017). What is more, they have been found to be more likely to demonstrate impairments in processing indirect speech acts, to have a distorted sense of humour (Corcoran, Cahill, & Frith, 1997; Rosin & Cerbus, 1984) and display an inability to appreciate irony (Drury, Robinson, & Birchwood, 1998). Other studies imply the presence of discourse deficits in people with schizophrenia (Andreasen, Arndt, Alliger, Miller, & Flaum, 1995; McKenna & Oh, 2005), a lack of cohesion in samples of patient speech (Noel‐Jorand, Reinert, Giudicelli, & Dassa, 1997), lowered sensitivity to linguistic violations (Kuperberg, McGuire, & David, 1998) and a higher number of errors in decoding communicative intent (Tenyi, Herold, Szili, & Trixler, 2002).…”

From Semantic to Social Deficits: Dysfunction of the Nondominant Posterior Perisylvian Area in Schizophrenia

“…[9][10][11] Of note, whereas active psychotic symptoms have been found to have a definite role in deficits in these areas, a significant part of the impairment does not depend on symptoms but is considered to constitute a trait inherent to the disease. 12,13 An additional source of evidence underscoring linguistic functions of the nondominant hemisphere comes from patients with "disconnection syndromes," either with sections or agenesia of the corpus callosum. These studies suggest that left hemispheric structures involved in language comprehension and production necessitate input from the nondominant hemisphere to appropriately and accurately label emotions.…”

Preliminary study of higher‐order language and extralinguistic impairments in individuals with high clinical risk of psychosis and first episode of schizophrenia

“…What is more, other studies suggest that schizophrenia patients are more likely to have impairments in processing indirect speech acts, which hampers their inference of the intent of a speaker from indirect requests (Corcoran, 2003), impedes their understanding of indirect information (Corcoran, 2003) and complicates story comprehension (Langdnon, Davies, & Coltheart, 2002). What is more, a distorted sense of humour (Corcoran, Cahill, & Frith, 1997;Rosin & Cerbus, 1984) and inability to appreciate irony (Drury, Robinson, & Birchwood, 1998) have also been described.…”