Abstract
Emerging linguistic evidence points at disordered language behavior as a defining characteristic of schizophrenia. In this article, we review this literature and demonstrate how a framework focusing on two core functions of language—reference and propositional meaning—can conceptualize schizophrenic symptoms, identify important variables for risk assessment, diagnosis, and treatment, and inform cognitive behavioral therapy and other remedial approaches. We introduce the linguistic phenomena of deictic anchoring and propositional complexity, explain how they relate to schizophrenic symptoms, and show how they can be tracked in language behavior.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Schizophrenia, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry
Emerging linguistic evidence points at disordered language behavior as a defining characteristic of schizophrenia. We review this literature and demonstrate how a framework focusing on two core functions of language—reference and propositional meaning—can conceptualize schizophrenic symptoms, identify important variables for risk assessment, diagnosis, and treatment, and inform cognitive behavioral therapy and other remedial approaches
We introduce the linguistic phenomena of deictic anchoring and propositional complexity, explain how they relate to schizophrenic symptoms, and show how they can be tracked in language behavior
Summary
Human thought is best expressed through language output. No other type of behavior is able to capture its complexity with as little ambiguity or effort. Priming refers to the phenomenon that the response to a word (e.g., “cat”) is faster when preceded by a related word (e.g., the semantically related “dog,” or phonologically related “mat”) This priming effect has been repeatedly shown to be enhanced in schizophrenia, with evidence of increase in thought disorder [23, 24]. Language production too provides evidence for pathological activation patterns: in a verbal fluency task (“name as many animals as you can”), people with schizophrenia and their unaffected siblings produced more words than controls and the words were, semantically, more closely related [27] These studies have provided valuable insight into possible disruptions of neural connectivity, especially in the lexicon. It will take more empirical work to test the ideas described
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