Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T11:05:42.569Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Negative Features, Retrieval Processes and Verbal Fluency in Schizophrenia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Heidi A. Allen ,
Peter F. Liddle  and
Christopher D. Frith
Heidi A. Allen
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow, Middlesex HA1 3UJ
Peter F. Liddle
Affiliation:
Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, London W14
Christopher D. Frith*
Affiliation:
MRC Cyclotron Unit, Hammersmith Hospital and Psychology Department, University College, London WC1
*
∗Correspondence
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Twenty chronic schizophrenic patients, ten matched normal controls and nine depressed controls performed categorical verbal fluency tasks for three minutes each on five separate occasions. On each occasion the schizophrenic patients generated significantly fewer words than the controls. Comparison of the different occasions showed that the schizophrenic patients had as many words available in their inner lexicons but were inefficient in retrieving them. The schizophrenic patients also generated fewer clusters of related words and more words outside the specified category. Reduced ability to generate words while the lexicon remained intact was more marked in patients with negative features. Patients with incoherence, in contrast, were more likely to produce inappropriate words. We propose that both poverty of speech and incoherence of speech reflect problems in the retrieval of words from the lexicon. To cope with these problems patients with poverty of speech terminate their search prematurely while the patients with incoherence commit errors in selecting words for output.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 163 , Issue 6 , December 1993 , pp. 769 - 775
Copyright
Copyright © 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.)

References

Allen, H. A. & Frith, C. D. (1983) Selective retrieval and free emission of category exemplars in schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychology, 74, 481–490.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association (1987) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd edn, revised) (DSM–III–R). Washington, DC: APA.Google Scholar
Andreasen, N. C. (1982) Negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry, 39, 784–788.Google Scholar
Beck, A. T., Ward, C. H., Mendelson, M., et al (1961) An inventory for measuring depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 4, 561–571.Google Scholar
Bench, C. J., Friston, K. J., Brown, R. G., et al (1992) The anatomy of melancholia - focal abnormalities of cerebral blood flow in major depression. Psychological Medicine, 22, 607–615.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, B. D. (1978) Referent communication disturbances in schizophrenia. In Language and Cognition in Schizophrenia (ed. Schwartz, S.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J. (1980) The molecular pathology of schizophrenia: more than one disease process? British Medical Journal, i, 66–68.Google Scholar
Frith, C. D. (1987) The positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia reflect impairments in the perception and initiation of action. Psychological Medicine, 17, 631–648.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frith, C. D. & Allen, H. A. (1988) Language disorders in schizophrenia and their implications for neuropsychology. In Schizophrenia: The Major Issues (eds Bebbington, P. & McGuffin, P.). Oxford: Heinemann Medical.Google Scholar
Frith, C. D., Friston, K. J., Liddle, P. F., et al (1991a) Willed action and the prefrontal cortex in man: a study with PET. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 244, 241–246.Google Scholar
Frith, C. D., Leary, J., Cahill, C., et al (1991b) Performance on psychological tests. Demographic and clinical correlates of the results of these tests. British Journal of Psychiatry, 159 (suppl. 13), 25–29.Google Scholar
Graesser, A. & Mandler, G. (1978) Limited processing capacity constrains the storage of unrelated sets of words and retrieval from natural categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4, 86–100.Google Scholar
Gruenewald, P. J. & Lockhead, G. R. (1980) The free recall of category exemplars. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6, 225–240.Google Scholar
Hemsley, D. R. (1977) What have cognitive deficits to do with schizophrenic symptoms? British Journal of Psychiatry, 130, 167–173.Google Scholar
Johnstone, E. C., Crow, T. J., Frith, C. D., et al (1978) The dementia of dementia praecox. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 57, 305–324.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kolb, B. & Wishaw, I. Q. (1983) Performance of schizophrenic patients on tests sensitive to left or right frontal, temporal or parietal function in neurological patients. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 171, 435–443.Google Scholar
Kraepelin, E. (1919) Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia. Edinburgh: Livingstone.Google Scholar
Krawiecka, M., Goldberg, D. & Vaughan, M. (1977) A standardised psychiatric assessment for rating chronic psychotic patients. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 55, 299–308.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liddle, P. F. (1987) The symptoms of chronic schizophrenia: a reexamination of the positive-negative dichotomy. British Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 145–151.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Liddle, P. F. & Morris, D. L. (1991) Schizophrenic syndromes and frontal lobe performance. British Journal of Psychiatry, 158, 340–345.Google Scholar
Liddle, P. F., Friston, K. J., Frith, C. D., et al (1992) Patterns of cerebral blood flow in schizophrenia. British Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 179–186.Google Scholar
Marcel, A. J. (1983) Conscious and unconscious perception: an approach to the relations between phenomenal experience and perceptual processes. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 238–300.Google Scholar
Neale, J. M. & Oltmanns, T. F. (1980) Schizophrenia. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Nelson, H. E. & O'Connell, A. (1978) Dementia: the estimation of premorbid intelligence levels using the new adult reading test. Cortex, 14, 234–244.Google Scholar
Oltmanns, T. F. & Maher, B. A. (1989) Delusional Beliefs. Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Patterson, K. E. (1972) Some characteristics of retrieval limitation in long-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 11, 685–691.Google Scholar
Rochester, S. & Martin, J. R. (1979) Crazy Talk. New York: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, K. (1958) Clinical Psychopathology. New York: Grune & Stratton.Google Scholar
Slade, P. D. & Bentall, R. P. (1988) Sensory Deceptions: Towards a Scientific Analysis of Hallucinations. Beckenham, Kent: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Spitzer, R. L., Endicott, J. & Robbins, E. (1978) Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC): rationale and reliability. Archives of General Psychiatry, 35, 773–782.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.