Language disorder in schizophrenia

[nlc]

I have a problem..

I study linguistics. I want to make a research about "language disorder in schizophrenia". But i found some uncompleted- articles (due to payment issue, i guess) and some classification of disorders on internet. I need some texts to analiyse and I cant find them. All I remember is conversations with my grandfather who was an schizophrenic. but i need text.

Is it possible to find some conversation of the patients in order to see and explain disorders well? Or it is not appropriate due do patient privacy?
please dont hesisate giving your advice, opinion etc.
thanks.

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[strangeglove]

There is an extensive literature on "thought disorder" in schizophrenia, which is probably what you mean when you talk about "language disorder". It's one of the core features of schizophrenia. Type the term into Pubmed and you will see.

 

[toby jones]

In order to assess the presence from absence of 'thought disorder' you need to operationalize it. The way 'thought disorder' is operationalized is to assess its presence / absence on the basis of verbal reports (language).

There are some transcripts of conversations with patients that have been published. I tended to find that in the literature there were some transcripts that were found over and over and over... The reason why people liked to focus in on that particular segment of the transcript is that they took it to illustrate or exemplify some theoretical point, however. As such, there is a considerable bias in the conversations that are reported in the literature according to which theoretical point they are trying to make.

It can be hard, too, when there are different ways that one can interpret what is said. I often get this urge to ask 'did you ask them what they meant by that? Whether they meant x or y or x?' They didn't ask them that, however, because they didn't consider that their utterance could be interpreted in those ways (they thought it was 'just obvious' that they meant x' or whatever.

It would be nice to have some interaction with actual patients... That can be tricky, though...

 

[toby jones]

I should say that the literature that I'm thinking of in particular is the literature on delusions (a thought disorder which is assessed on the basis of what the patient says). There is a transcript that is cited over and over and over... Goes something like this:

(Denial of ownership of a paralyzed limb)

doctor: (holds the patients paralyzed hand to the right(i forget) visual field) 'whose hand is this?'
patient: 'your hand'.
doctor: 'you ever see a person with three hands'?
patient: 'a hand is an extension of an arm. you have three arms, therefore you have three hands'.

This is meant to illustrate that there wasn't a problem with the patients reasoning... It was just that the patient accepted premises that the majority of us wouldn't accept (e.g., that the hand was the doctors). As they say: One mans modus ponens is another mans modus tollens. The patient inferred the presence of the doctor having three arms by modus ponens. The rest of us would deny the hand was the doctors by modus tollens.

What does the example really show? Maybe that... The process of questioning can lead to confabulation (the patient started with the delusion that the hand was not his. In being asked whose hand it was the patient confabulated to say that it was the doctors. In being questioned about the doctor having three hands the patient confabulated that the doctor had three arms).

Is the patient irrational? Hard to say...

(Not sure if this is the kind of language disturbance you have in mind or whether you are more interested in trying to make sense of 'word salad'?

 

[madman007]

The Cognitive Neuropsychology Of Schizophrenia (Essays in Cognitive Psychology) by Christoph Frith
contains detailed analysis of speech and thought disorder in schizophrenia, with emphasis on linguistics, especially chapter 5 and 6.



http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Neu...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208440609&sr=8-1

 

[la_tortuga]

this is a classic paper:

Andreasen NC. Thought, language, and communication disorders. I. A Clinical assessment, definition of terms, and evaluation of their reliability. Archives of General Psychiatry 1979;36(12):1315-21. PMID 496551.

 

[erg923]

Addressing the research design issues of the OP-this all depends on what your hypothesis and research question is regarding thought disorder in schizophrenia. Are you looking at the biological substrates of the phenomena? Are you attempting to explain or ask about its usefulness or representations? Are you looking at it as an isolated symptom, or relating it to other aspects of the disorder? Getting specific quotes from a patient would not really be necessary (although if you doing a case study design it would), as there is plenty of literature of the phenomena of disorganized speech and "word salad" in patients with schizophrenia with specific stereotypical examples.