Semantics, pragmatics, and formal thought disorders in people with schizophrenia

Abstract

Background:The aim of this study was to analyze how formal thought disorders (FTD) affect semantics and pragmatics in patients with schizophrenia.Methods:The sample comprised subjects with schizophrenia (n = 102) who met the criteria for the disorder according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition Text Revision. In the research process, the following scales were used: Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) for psychopathology measurements; the Scale for the Assessment of Thought, Language, and Communication (TLC) for FTD, Word Accentuation Test (WAT), System for the Behavioral Evaluation of Social Skills (SECHS), the pragmatics section of the Objective Criteria Language Battery (BLOC-SR) and the verbal sections of the Wechsler Adults Intelligence Scale (WAIS) III, for assessment of semantics and pragmatics.Results:The results in the semantics and pragmatics sections were inferior to the average values obtained in the general population. Our data demonstrated that the more serious the FTD, the worse the performances in the Verbal-WAIS tests (particularly in its vocabulary, similarities, and comprehension sections), SECHS, and BLOC-SR, indicating that FTD affects semantics and pragmatics, although the results of the WAT indicated good premorbid language skills.Conclusion:The principal conclusion we can draw from this study is the evidence that in schizophrenia the superior level of language structure seems to be compromised, and that this level is related to semantics and pragmatics; when there is an alteration in this level, symptoms of FTD appear, with a wide-ranging relationship between both language and FTD. The second conclusion is that the subject’s language is affected by the disorder and rules out the possibility of a previous verbal impairment.

Reliability and validity of the Korean version of the Scale for the Assessment of Thought, Language, and Communication

“…As can be seen from Table 2, the severity of most items of the Korean version of the TLC scale was similar to previous study findings [13,17,18,20,21]. In our study, the score on the stilted speech item was high compared with previous studies.…”

“…The scale was validated in the differential diagnosis of patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder [13][14][15][16]. The TLC scale was used subsequently to assess the clinical manifestations of FTD in patients, in clinical studies of schizophrenia [17][18][19][20][21]. Using the TLC scale, several neuroimaging studies have suggested that morphological and functional alterations of the left superior temporal sulcus and adjacent structures are implicated in the presence of FTD in schizophrenia [22][23][24].…”

Deficits in nominal reference identify thought disordered speech in a narrative production task

“…If a patient says a girl but the girl would be expected, or mis-uses a pronoun, the problem does not lie at the lexical end, but in how a given lexical concept is referentially used via grammar. Given the link to context, a defect in this mechanism could relate to pragmatic impairments noted in FTD, interconnecting linguistic levels [ 49 , 50 ]. Another semantic-level variable, equally lexically based, was paraphasia, which did reveal significant differences between patients with TD and both controls and patients without TD.…”

“…The present study contributes to clarifying this contradictory situation by showing that for the linguistically more specific syntactic measures used here, no group differences are seen. Future work should corroborate the existence of syntactic impairments and their specificity to TD, as well raise this issue of specificity for other linguistic domains such as pragmatics [ 49 , 50 ].…”

Translation And Validation Into Spanish Of The Formal Thought Disorder Scales

“…Formal thought disorders are a main feature in schizophrenia and they are clinically characterized by word associations, incoherent speech, and deficits in abstract thinking (Andreasen, 1979a;Docherty, 2012;Jeronimo, Queirós, Cheniaux, & Telles-Correia, 2018;Lindenmayer & Kahn, 2006;Salavera & Puyuelo, 2010;Salavera, Puyuelo, Antoñanzas, & Teruel, 2013).…”