Skip Navigation



Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access published online on September 23, 2009
Schizophrenia Bulletin, doi:10.1093/schbul/sbp108
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Rubino, I. A.
Right arrow Articles by Docherty, N. M.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Rubino, I. A.
Right arrow Articles by Docherty, N. M.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Referential Failures and Affective Reactivity of Language in Schizophrenia and Unipolar Depression

I. Alex Rubino1,2, Luciana D’Agostino2, Luca Sarchiola2, Domenico Romeo2, Alberto Siracusano2 and Nancy M. Docherty3
2 Department of Neuroscience, University of Rome—Tor Vergata, Via Nomentana 1352, Rome 00141, Italy
3 Department of Psychology, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44240

1 To whom correspondence should be addressed; tel: +393405608278, fax: +39-41400343, e-mail: I.Rubino{at}Med.Uniroma2.it.

Reference failures, and their increase in affectively negative conditions (known as affective reactivity of speech), are more frequently observed in schizophrenia patients than in normal controls, but no information is available comparing schizophrenia with depression, ie, a mental disorder closely linked to the concept of affective reactivity. To address this gap in the literature, the present study compared 24 schizophrenia inpatients, 21 unipolar depression inpatients and 21 normal controls. Two 10-minute conversational speech samples (1 on negative and 1 on positive memories) were collected from each patient. The transcripts of the audiotaped interviews were analyzed blindly for frequencies of 6 types of referential failures, employing the Communication Disturbances Index, adapted for use with Italian. The schizophrenia patients made more frequent total reference failures and, specifically, more missing information references than the depression patients. The depression patients made more frequent reference failures than the normal controls, overall, and on most of the specific types of failures. Affective reactivity of speech was observed only for the schizophrenia sample and was greatest for missing information references. This study supports the viability of reference failure analysis as a measure of communication disturbance in a language other than English. The findings indicate that schizophrenia and depression both are associated with high levels of referential failures but that affective reactivity of speech is present only in schizophrenia and not in depression.

Keywords: reference disturbances / schizophrenia / depression


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.