PAUSING IN THE ORAL SPEECH OF PATIENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

Abstract

The article examines the psycholinguistic analysis of pauses in the spontaneous oral speech of patients with schizophrenia. The purpose of the study is to identify the characteristics of speech pauses in patients with schizophrenia and compare them with pauses in the speech of mentally healthy individuals. The object of the study is the oral speech of patients diagnosed with "schizophrenia", and the subject is the peculiarities of speech pauses in these patients. The study employs general scientific methods (observation, quantitative, descriptive) and specialized methods of psycholinguistic analysis. The research material includes recorded fragments of the oral speech of patients with schizophrenia, totaling 36 minutes and 16 seconds, and the oral speech of mentally healthy individuals, totaling 45 minutes and 23 seconds. The scientific novelty of the research lies in presenting a psycholinguistic analysis of pauses in the speech of patients with schizophrenia and comparing the obtained results with the speech of mentally healthy individuals. The results showed that the average number of pauses in the oral speech of schizophrenic patients is nearly five times higher than the average number of pauses in the speech of mentally healthy individuals (3 pauses versus 14, respectively). It was also found that the speech of mentally ill individuals is quantitatively dominated by filled and unfilled pauses, with hesitation pauses being present only in the speech of schizophrenic patients. The average pause length in schizophrenic patients’ speech is 240 ms longer than in healthy individuals’ speech. The conclusions of the study may indicate difficulties in the organization and planning of speech activity in patients with schizophrenia. The research perspectives involve further study of the psycholinguistic aspects of speech disorders in schizophrenia, which may contribute to the development of diagnostic and speech correction methods for mentally ill individuals at the early stages of the disease.