Disturbances of voluntary control of saccadic eye movements in schizophrenic patients

To study whether or not schizophrenic patients have disturbances in voluntary control of saccades, we examined visually elicited saccade and antisaccade tasks in 10 normal control subjects and 12 schizophrenic patients. The latencies of saccades in the schizophrenic patients were not significantly different from those of normal controls. However, 6 of the 12 schizophrenics showed significant abnormalities in the antisaccade task; 6 made more errors and 3 of them showed longer latencies than normal controls. Five of these 6 patients revealed an atrophy of the frontal cortex on computed tomography (CT) scans. These results indicate that many schizophrenics show difficulties in voluntary control of saccades, suggesting a dysfunction of the frontal cortex.     

Pragmatic elements of the speech of patients with Broca's aphasia: preliminary clinical study

The author studies three patients with Broca aphasia characterized by the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination, and following A.R. Luria's criterion on the use and comprehension of pragmatic elements of speech--deixis of time, person, place, discourse and social, implicatures of Grice, conventional, generalized and particularized and presupposition. For this, the author works on the development of three hours speech resulted from interviews and also uses specific tests. One of the patients lost the propositional content of speech and internal language, typical of severe dynamic aphasia. The other two showed instability in comprehension and use of time and place deixis only during the tests, not revealing this anomaly at non-artificial conditions. These findings suggest that metalanguage is upset with its specific temporo-spatial elements affected, and it is possible that there is a graduation in the loss of discourse linkage with verbal and nonverbal context in which mediation is made by pragmatic relation in frontal lesions.     

Electrophysiological distinctions in processing conceptual relationships within simple sentences

The aim of this study was to determine whether or not the brain distinguishes between two types of conceptual relationships between noun-phrases (NPs) and verbs during online processing of simple, unambiguous English sentences. A total of 15 participants read and made plausibility judgments on sentences that were presented word-by-word. Event-related potentials elicited by critical verbs were measured. In all cases, the critical verb assigned a thematic role of 'agent' to its subject NP. In non-violated sentences (e.g. "For breakfast the boys would only eat em leader"), the preceding NP was animate ("boys") and was a likely agent for a given verb ("eat") given its preceding context ("For breakfast"). In both types of conceptually violated sentences, the NPs were unlikely agents for the verbs given their preceding contexts. In 'thematic role animacy violations' (e.g. "For breakfast the eggs would only eat em leader"), the NP was inanimate ("eggs") and was therefore more likely to occupy the role of 'theme' than 'agent', i.e. eggs, being inanimate, cannot eat but they can be eaten. In 'non-thematic role pragmatic violations' (e.g. "For breakfast the boys would only bury em leader"), the thematic role of agent assigned by the verb ("bury") to its preceding NP ("boys") is inherently acceptable (boys can bury), but the sentence is still pragmatically incongruous given the preceding context ("At breakfast"). As expected, the non-thematic role pragmatic violations elicited a significant N400 effect. The thematic role animacy violations elicited a smaller N400 effect that only approached significance across all participants. The thematic role animacy violations, however, elicited a significant P600 effect-an ERP component that is most commonly associated with processing syntactic information during language comprehension. We discuss the possibility that the P600 was elicited by the thematic role animacy violations (but not by the non-thematic role pragmatic violations) because, in the former but not the latter, there was an online attempt to structurally repair and make sense of the sentences by reassigning the thematic role of the NP that preceded the critical verb from 'agent' to 'theme'. Our findings suggest a qualitative neural distinction in processing these two types of conceptual anomalies within simple, unambiguous sentences.     

Subjective experience of language impairment and psychopathology in schizophrenia

The principal concern of this paper lies in the exploration of the possible role of the subjective experience of language impairment in shaping schizophrenic symptomatology. A previous model embracing the basic symptom theory and the vulnerability paradigm hypothesized that (self-perceived) impairment of receptive and expressive language and alexithymia may play a relevant role in facilitating the development of a nonparanoid prototype of schizophrenia. The experimental protocol which led to this model [emphasizing the comprehensive notion of 'language capacity' as pathoplastic modulator of overt schizophrenic syndromes (i.e. pathoplastic model)] was replicated on a wider schizophrenic sample, assessing contextually with diagnostic symptoms, depressive symptoms, alexithymia, subjective experience of negative symptoms and hedonic capacity. Since schizophrenics with self-experienced language capacity impairment did not differ from other schizophrenics, as regards positive, negative and disorganized symptoms, but just in negative symptom-related distress, an alternative interpretation of the possible role of the subjective experience of language impairment in schizophrenic psychopathology is proposed (i.e. idioplastic hypothesis).     

Eye tracking dysfunction and schizophrenia: an overview with special reference to the genetics of schizophrenia

A high prevalence of eye tracking dysfunction (ETD) among schizophrenic patients and their relatives is one of the most widely replicated findings in experimental psychopathology. Almost 25 years of research have shown the following: (1) ETD occurs in about half of schizophrenics, and is not a function of psychotic state, inattention or neuroleptic drug treatment; (2) ETD involves primarily an impairment of smooth pursuit eye movements, characterized by reduced gain and increased compensatory saccades; (3) ETD also occurs in a substantial proportion of unaffected first-degree relatives of schizophrenics, including clinically discordant co-twins of schizophrenics, suggesting that ETD is under genetic control; (4) the prevalence of ETD in relatives of schizophrenics is higher than the recurrence risk for schizophrenia. ETD is one of several traits associated with schizophrenia and genetically related to schizophrenia. The use of co-familial traits like ETD, in addition to schizophrenia, increases the power of linkage studies to find a gene(s) for schizophrenia compared with conventional methods of linkage analysis, which use only the presence of the schizophrenic psychosis as the phenotype.     

L’enfance du schizophrène

We are able to identify the different risk factors involved in the development of the disorder from a study of the childhood of a schizophrenic patient. More specifically, we will define the perinatal risk factors : season and place of birth, viral exposure during pregnancy and obstetric complications. Developmental factors will also be discussed. Socialisation, language, psychomotor and cognitive development disorders are all developmental difficulties seen during the childhood of the schizophrenic patient. Finally we will finish by discussing a few psychosocial risk factors.     

Influence of education on WCST performances in schizophrenic patients.

Schizophrenic patients have been widely reported to fail in performing Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). These data have been mostly interpreted as cognitive difficulties and/or neurofunctional impairment inherent to schizophrenia. Nevertheless, checking sample characteristics, the importance of variables as education appears relevant. In our study we examined schizophrenic patients and controls with low and high educational levels respectively. ANOVA results show significant differences on WCST performances for the variable diagnosis (schizophrenics and controls) and for the variable educational level (low and high educational level). It therefore seems necessary call for caution in interpreting WCST results in schizophrenic patients when educational level is not considered.     

Analogical reasoning in schizophrenic delusions.

PURPOSE: Reasoning ability has often been argued to be impaired in people with schizophrenic delusions, although evidence for this is far from convincing. This experiment examined the analogical reasoning abilities of several groups of patients, including non-deluded and deluded schizophrenics, to test the hypothesis that performance by the deluded schizophrenic group would be impaired. SUBJECTS/MATERIALS: Eleven deluded schizophrenics, 10 depressed subjects, seven non-deluded schizophrenics and 16 matched non-psychiatric controls, who were matched on a number of key variables, were asked to solve an analogical reasoning task. RESULTS: Performance by the deluded schizophrenic group was certainly impaired when compared with the depressed and non-psychiatric control groups though less convincingly so when compared with the non-deluded schizophrenic group. The impairment shown by the deluded schizophrenic group seemed to occur at the initial stage of the reasoning task. DISCUSSION: The particular type of impairment shown by the deluded subjects was assessed in relation to other cognitive problems already researched and the implications of these problems on reasoning tasks and theories of delusions was discussed.     

老年精神分裂症患者的认知功能研究

目的 探讨老年精神分裂症患者认知功能损害的范围和特点。方法 采用世界卫生组织老年认知功能评价成套神经心理测验(WHO-BCAI)、简易智能状态检查(MMSE)、日常生活量表(ADL)作为主要工具,对老年精神分裂症患者和正常老人进行测试。结果 老年精神分裂症组35例,男19例,女16例,平均年龄(63.24±6.5)岁。正常对照组83例,男42例,女41例,平均年龄(65.9±5.9)岁。MMSE平均总分,老年精神分裂症组(24.9±4.2)分,正常为(28.7±1.1)分;老年精神分裂症组ADL平均总分(27.1±8.1)分,正常组(20.3±1.2)分;WHO-BCAI测验结果显示,两组在7项听觉词汇学习测验、4项语言能力测验、4项视觉辨认测验、5项注销测验、2项连线测验、分类测验、精神运动测验和空间结构测验分别具有显著性差异(P<0.05)。结论 老年精神分裂症患者认知功能有明显障碍,并且范围广泛。     

What it is said versus how it is said: comprehension of affective prosody in men with Klinefelter (47,XXY) syndrome.

Difficulties in social communication in individuals with Klinefelter syndrome (XXY chromosomal pattern) have largely been attributed to deficits in left hemisphere-mediated, language functions. This study examined the ability of XXY men to decode emotions from tone of voice, a pragmatic aspect of social communication that may be associated with right hemisphere functioning. A total of 26 XXY men and 20 men from the general population completed tasks involving emotion discrimination in speech, based on verbal content or tone of voice. The XXY group displayed relative difficulties in discriminating emotions in tone of voice, and, to a lesser extend, in verbal content. This finding suggests that the XXY chromosomal pattern may not only be associated with difficulties in semantic aspects of language, but with prosodic aspects, as well. Our findings may contribute to the development of more comprehensive models addressing the role of the X chromosome in normal and abnormal development of social communication.     

The language of schizophrenia: an analysis of micro and macrolinguistic abilities and their neuropsychological correlates

Language disturbance is one of the main diagnostic features in schizophrenia and abnormalities of brain language areas have been consistently found in schizophrenic patients. The main aim of this study was to describe the impairment of micro and macrolinguistic abilities in a group of twenty-nine schizophrenic patients during the phase of illness stability compared to forty-eight healthy participants matched for age, gender and educational level. Microlinguistic abilities refer to lexical and morpho-syntactic skills, whereas macrolinguistic abilities relate to pragmatic and discourse level processing. Secondary aims were to detect the effect of macrolinguistic on microlinguistic ability, and the neuropsychological impairment associated with the linguistic deficit. The linguistic assessment was performed on story-telling. Three narratives were elicited with the help of a single-picture stimulus and two cartoon stories with six pictures each. A modified version of the Mental Deterioration Battery was used to assess selective cognitive performances. A series of t-tests indicated that all the macrolinguistic variables were significantly impaired in schizophrenic patients in at least one of the three story-tellings. Furthermore, the limited impairment found in microlinguistic abilities was influenced by macrolinguistic performance. Multivariate stepwise regression analyses suggested that reduced attention performances and deficit in executive functions were predictors of linguistic impairment. Language production in schizophrenia is impaired mainly at the macrolinguistic level of processing. It is disordered and filled with irrelevant pieces of information and derailments. Such erratic discourse may be linked to the inability to use pragmatic rules and to cognitive deficits involving factors such as attention, action planning, ordering and sequencing.     

Subjective experiences related to alcohol use among schizophrenics

Comorbid alcohol use disorders are common in schizophrenia. Although a variety of explanatory hypotheses involving self-medication have been proposed, few data available regarding schizophrenic patients' subjective experiences while using alcohol. We report interview data from 75 DSM-III-R schizophrenic outpatients regarding their subjective responses to alcohol. Over half of our sample reported that alcohol improved social anxiety, tension, dysphoria, apathy, anhedonia, and sleep difficulties. Other nonpsychotic experiences were frequently improved as well. In contrast, no more than 15% of subjects reported that alcohol relieved any specific psychotic symptom; similar proportions of subjects reported that alcohol aggravated psychotic symptoms. Reporting that alcohol had a positive effect on nonpsychotic experiences was associated with having lifetime alcohol use disorders. Reporting that alcohol relieved psychotic symptoms was associated both with having lifetime alcohol use disorders and with the number of psychotic symptoms reported. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding alcohol abuse and dependence among schizophrenics.     

Strategies of Deception: Under‐Informativity,Uninformativity, and Lies—Misleading With Different Kinds of Implicature

Conversation is often cast as a cooperative effort, and some aspects of it, such as implicatures, have been claimed to depend on an assumption of cooperation (Grice, 1989). But any systematic class of inference derived from assumptions of cooperation, such as implicatures, could also be, on occasion, used to deceive listeners strategically. Here, we explore the extent to which speakers might choose different kinds of implicature triggers in an uncooperative game of communication. Concretely, we present a study in the form of a cooperative or competitive signaling game where communicators can exploit three kinds of implicatures: exact reading of numeral expressions, scalar implicatures linked to the quantifier some and ad hoc scalar implicatures. We compare how these implicatures are used depending on whether the participants' co‐player is cooperative, a strategic opponent, or a non‐strategic opponent. We find that when the strategy of the co‐player is clear to the participants, the three types of implicatures are used to exploit the co‐player's interpretation strategy. Indeed, participants use numeral implicatures as reliably as truth conditional content in all three conditions, while scalar quantifiers and ad hoc implicature elicit different strategies. We interpret these findings as evidence that speakers expect their interlocutors to infer implicatures from their utterances even in contexts where they know that they will be perceived as uncooperative.     

精神分裂症患者伴发代谢综合征的调查

目的:研究住院精神分裂症伴发代谢综合征者的患病率及生活质量,并分析其可能的影响因素.方法:对500例住院精神分裂症患者进行问卷调查和实验室检查. 结果:500例精神分裂症患者中代谢综合征者的患病率为37％,与代谢综合征患病风险相关的危险因素中包括年龄、病程(P＜0.05).精神分裂症伴发代谢综合征患者在生活质量方面,心...     

An Exploration of Causes of Non-Literal Language Problems in Individuals with Asperger Syndrome

Individuals with Asperger Syndrome (AS), a high functioning variant of Autism, are often noted to possess intact language ability, yet fail to use this language capacity to engage in interactive communication. This difficulty using language in a social context has been referred to as a deficit in pragmatic language. In particular, difficulty understanding nonliteral language devices, such as irony has been observed. This paper examines the veracity of two theories that have attempted to explain the causes of pragmatic language difficulties in individuals with Asperger Syndrome; the theory of Weak Central Coherence (WCC) and Social Inference theory. Fourteen young adults with AS and 24 age-matched controls were assessed on cognitive tasks measuring WCC processes, social inference or Theory of Mind ability, and the ability to interpret ironic remarks. Results indicated that the ability to understand the belief states of others is critical to understanding ironic language in AS.     

Dream Content Study in Chronic Schizophrenics and Normals by RE MP-A wakening Technique

There has been a relatively few studies on the dreams of psychotic patients though the new technique of studying dreams during the rapid eye movement period of sleep (REMP) has been established in these 10 years. The present study was performed on 21 schizophrenics and 34 normal subjects to investigate the nature of content of dreams collected by using the technique of awakening the subject during REMP. In schizophrenic subjects, the latency of dream reporting was longer, the length of time of the spontaneous dream reporting was shorter and a larger number of examiner's supplementary questions was necessary than in normal subjects. The rate of dream recall in the next morning was lower in schizophrenics. Analysis of the sentence of the dream narratives revealed that, in schizophrenic subjects, the number of words as well as conceptual elements (clauses) in a spontaneously reported dream narrative was much smaller than that of normal subjects. As to the nature of the dream content in schizophrenic subjects, the incidences of coherent dream, complex dream, and dreams with bizarre elements were lower than those of normal subjects. The incidence of dream with color was higher in the schizophrenic subjects. There was no significant difference in the incidence of experimental elements in the dream content between schizophrenics and normal subjects. No significant difference was found in the number of characters per dream in schizophrenics and normals except for the lower incidence of a crowd of people in the former. As to the type of character in the dream, the incidence of family members was higher and that of friends lower in schizophrenics. The incidence of pleasant emotion in the dream was similar in normal and schizophrenics, whereas those of unpleasant feelings such as sadness, anger, fear and anxiety were higher in schizophrenics. As to the interpersonal emotional relationships in the dream, the tendency that the male dreamer was aggressive to male and friendly to female characters whereas the female dreamer was aggressive to male and aggressive as well as friendly to female characters, was observed in both normal and schizophrenic subjects. It was suggested that the features of dream reporting and dream content in the schizophrenic subjects seemed to reflect fairly accurately the characteristics of the inner experiences of schizophrenics.     

Communicative aspects of studies in schizophrenia]

Family studies of schizophrenics have shown the importance of factors such as a malignant mother-child symbiosis, changes in the family role structure, pseudo-mutuality and techniques on how 'to drive someone crazy'. More recent studies concern themselves with disturbance of communication and interaction within schizophrenic families. In particular, the problems of double-bind and other paradoxical modes of communication are discussed by the author. In contrast to double-bind as a sociological aetiological model which defines schizophrenia as a metacommunicative disturbance and evoked reaction of the self-system, the hypothesis is proposed of an intrapsychic double-bind which the patient is producing wihtin himself.     

Comorbidity of schizophrenia and prelingual deafness: its impact on social network structures

Background: Prelingually deaf persons usually gain only a rudimentary command of speech and prefer sign language to communicate within the deaf community without the handicap they experience in the hearing world. Maintaining social contact within this rather scattered community, however, requires higher degrees of social initiative and mobility. The aim of the present paper was to study the quantity and quality of social integration among a group of prelingually deaf schizophrenic patients (n = 49) and two control groups comprising prelingually deaf psychiatric but non-psychotic patients (n = 38) and hearing schizophrenic patients (n = 30), with account being taken of the special socialisation conditions of deaf persons and of their cultural standards and values. Method: Data were collected with the help of semi-structured interviews; with the deaf patients these were conducted in German sign language. Using rating procedures we assessed seven social support components, selected items from a history schedule for schizophrenia, and the probands' visual and verbal language skills. Results: The social networks of the two deaf groups were found to have larger gaps than those of the hearing schizophrenic patients, with significant differences being registered most clearly in the comparison between deaf schizophrenic and hearing schizophrenic patients. Comparison of the verbal and visual language skills of the two deaf groups revealed a substantial deficit among the deaf schizophrenics. Visual language skills were found to correlate more strongly than verbal language skills with the social support components. Conclusion: Prelingual deafness has a strong impact on the course of schizophrenia. In the long run, many of these patients belong to a “minority within a minority”. Accepted: 16 July 1999