Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T20:49:32.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Positive and Negative Symptoms and the Thematic Organisation of Schizophrenic Speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Heidelinde A. Allen
Heidelinde A. Allen*
Affiliation:
Clinical Research Centre, Watford Road, Harrow, Middlesex HA1 3UJ
*
∗Now c/o Department of Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology Services, 2nd Floor, Royal Free Hospital, Pond Street, Hampstead, London NW3 2QG
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

This study questions the prevailing view that schizophrenic delusions, hallucinations and incoherence of speech (positive symptoms) reflect loss of cognitive control and that flattening of affect and poverty of speech (negative symptoms) reflect restriction of cognitive processing.

The prevailing view was examined by analysing the thematic organisation of speech produced by 18 patients describing pictures. Results showed that (a) positive and negative symptom schizophrenics did not differ in the control and restriction of thematic speech organisation; (b) speech disordered schizophrenics, positive as well as negative, showed cognitive restriction, by producing fewer inferential ideas than non-speech disordered schizophrenics.

The wider implications of these results are discussed, particularly the implications of (b) for the notion of concreteness in schizophrenia.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 144 , Issue 6 , June 1984 , pp. 611 - 617
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

∗

Reprint requests.

References

Allen, H. A. (1983) Do positive-symptom and negative-symptom subtypes of schizophrenia show qualitative differences in language production? Psychological Medicine, 13, 787–97.Google Scholar
Andreasen, N. C. (1979) Thought, language and communication disorders. II Diagnostic significance. Archives of General Psychiatry, 36, 1325–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Andreasen, N. C. (1982) Negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 39, 784–88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bransford, J. D. & Johnson, M. K. (1972) Contextual prerequisites for understanding: some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 11, 717–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bransford, J. D. & McCarrell, N. S. (1974) A sketch of a cognitive approach to comprehension: Some thoughts about what it means to comprehend. In Cognition and Symbolic Processes (eds W. B. Weimer and D. S. Palermo). Hillsdale, New York: Erlbaum Google Scholar
Broen, W. E. (1968) Schizophrenia: Research and Theory. New York & London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Chaika, E. (1982) A unified explanation for the diverse structural deviations reported for adult schizophrenics with disrupted speech. Journal of Communication Disorder, 15, 167–89.Google Scholar
Chapman, L. J. (1960) Confusion of figurative and literal usages of words by schizophrenics and brain damaged patients. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 60, 412–16.Google Scholar
Chapman, L. J., Chapman, J. P. & Miller, G. A. (1977) The theory of verbal behaviour in schizophrenia. In Contributions to the Psychopathology of Schizophrenia. (ed. Maher, B. A.). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, B. D. (1978) Self-editing deficits in schizophrenics. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 14, 267–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, B. D. & Camhi, J. (1967) Schizophrenic performance in a word-communication task. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 72, 240–46.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J. (1980) Molecular pathology of schizophrenia: More than one disease process? British Medical Journal, 280, 66–8.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J. (1981) Biological basis of mental disorder: The case for viral aetiology. In Epidemiological Impact of Psychotropic Drugs (eds. G. Tognoni, C. Bellantuono and M. Lader). Amsterdam: Elsevier/North Holland; Biomedical Press.Google Scholar
Feighner, J. P., Robins, E., Guze, S., Woodruff, R. A., Winokur, G. & Munoz, R. (1972) Diagnostic criteria for use in psychiatric research. Archives of General Psychiatry, 26, 57–62.Google Scholar
Frith, C. D. (1979) Consciousness, information processing and schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 134, 225–35.Google Scholar
Gorham, D. R. (1956) Use of the proverb test for differentiating schizophrenics from normals. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 20, 435–40.Google Scholar
Hemsley, D. R. (1977) What have cognitive deficits to do with schizophrenic symptoms? British Journal of Psychiatry, 130, 167–73.Google Scholar
Kraepelin, E. (1919) Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia. New York: R. E. Krieger (trans).Google Scholar
Krawiecka, M., Goldberg, D. & Vaughn, M. (1977) Standardised psychiatric assessment scale for rating chronic psychotic patients. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 55, 299–308.Google Scholar
Krueger, D. W. (1978) The differential diagnosis of proverb interpretation. In Phenomenology and Treatment of Schizophrenia (ed. W. E. Fann). New York: Spectrum.Google Scholar
Magaro, P. A. (1980) Cognition in schizophrenia and paranoia: the integration of cognitive processes. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Murray, H. A. (1943) Thematic Appreception Test Manual. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nathan, P. E. (1964) A comparative investigation of schizophrenic and normal conceptual performance. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 138, 443–51.Google Scholar
Neale, J. N. & Oltmanns, T. F. (1980) Schizophrenia. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Payne, R. W., Matussek, P. & George, E. I. (1959) An experimental study of schizophrenic thought disorder. Journal of Mental Science, 105, 627–52.Google Scholar
Rumelhart, D. E. (1977) Understanding and summarising brief stories. In Basic Processes in Reading: Perception and Comprehension (eds. La Berge, D. and Samuels, S. J.). New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Schank, R. C. & Abelson, R. P. (1977) Scripts, plans, goals and understanding. Hillsdale, New York: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Schimkunas, A. (1978) Hemispheric asymmetry and schizophrenic thought disorder. In Language and Cognition in Schizophrenia (ed. S. Schwartz). New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, T. (1980) Story comprehension: an introduction. Poetics, 9, 1–21.Google Scholar
Vigotsky, L. S. (1934) Thought in schizophrenia. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 31, 1066–77.Google Scholar
Wing, J. K., Cooper, J. K. & Sartorius, N.(1974) The measurement and classification of psychiatric symptoms. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Withers, E. & Hinton, J. (1971) Three forms of clinical tests of the sensorium and their reliability. British Journal of Psychiatry, 119, 1–8.Google Scholar
Woodward, J. A. & Goldstein, M. J. (1977) Communication deviance in the families of schizophrenics: a comment on the misuse of analysis of covariance. Science, 197, 1096–7.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.