Communication disturbances and family psychiatric history in parents of schizophrenic patients.

Parents of schizophrenic patients have demonstrated subtle disturbances of thought, language, and communication. The etiologic relevance of these disturbances is not clear. This study assessed levels of referential communication disturbance in the "natural speech" of schizophrenic patients, nonschizophrenic parents of patients, and control subjects matched to the patients' parents and tested for associations of communication disturbances in parents with family history of psychosis and with schizotypy scale scores. The speech of the patients' parents as a group contained high frequencies of referential failures. Those parents with first-degree family histories of psychosis and/or high schizotypy scale scores made more frequent referential failures than the rest of the parents. Family history was particularly highly associated with failures involving language structural breakdown. The results of this study suggest that referential disturbances in parents of patients may be related to genetic liability in the parents. However, such an effect does not appear to account fully for the sizable differences between parents and controls in levels of communication disturbance.

[1]  E. Schopler,et al.  Thought disorders in parents of psychotic children. A function of test anxiety. , 1969, Archives of general psychiatry.

[2]  N. Docherty,et al.  Comparative affective reactivity of different types of communication disturbances in schizophrenia. , 1997 .

[3]  K. Kendler,et al.  Self-report measures of schizotypy as indices of familial vulnerability to schizophrenia. , 1996, Schizophrenia bulletin.

[4]  K. Kendler,et al.  Evaluating the spectrum concept of schizophrenia in the Roscommon Family Study. , 1995, The American journal of psychiatry.

[5]  L. Wynne,et al.  THOUGHT DISORDER AND FAMILY RELATIONS OF SCHIZOPHRENICS. IV. RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS. , 1965, Archives of general psychiatry.

[6]  H. Berenbaum,et al.  Schizophrenia and personality: exploring the boundaries and connections between vulnerability and outcome. , 1994, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[7]  M. Baron,et al.  The Schedule for Schizotypal Personalities (SSP): A diagnostic interview for schizotypal features , 1981, Psychiatry Research.

[8]  N. Docherty.  Linguistic reference performance in parents of schizophrenic patients. , 1995, Psychiatry.

[9]  D. Barch,et al.  Language production and thought disorder in schizophrenia. , 1996, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[10]  L. Wynne,et al.  Genetic and psychosocial factors in schizophrenia: the Finnish Adoptive Family Study. , 1987, Schizophrenia bulletin.

[11]  Philip D. Harvey,et al.  Speech competence of children vulnerable to psychopathology , 1982, Journal of abnormal child psychology.

[12]  N C Andreasen,et al.  The family history method using diagnostic criteria. Reliability and validity. , 1977, Archives of general psychiatry.

[13]  Philip D. Harvey,et al.  Performance of nonpsychotic relatives of schizophrenic patients on cognitive tests , 1994, Psychiatry Research.

[14]  N C Andreasen,et al.  Communication disturbances in schizophrenia and mania. , 1996, Archives of general psychiatry.

[15]  B. Wexler,et al.  Affective Reactivity of Language in Stable Schizophrenic Outpatients and Their Parents , 1994, The Journal of nervous and mental disease.

[16]  L. Wynne,et al.  Gene-environment interaction in vulnerability to schizophrenia: findings from the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia. , 1997, The American journal of psychiatry.

[17]  J H Liem,et al.  Effects of verbal communications of parents and children: a comparison of normal and schizophrenic families. , 1974, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[18]  S. Ceci,et al.  Nature-nurture reconceptualized in developmental perspective: a bioecological model. , 1994, Psychological review.

[19]  Affective reactivity of speech in schizophrenia patients and their nonschizophrenic relatives. , 1998 .

[20]  S. Faraone,et al.  Neuropsychological risk indicators for schizophrenia: a review of family studies. , 1994, Schizophrenia bulletin.

[21]  N. Docherty,et al.  Communication disturbances in the natural speech of schizophrenic patients and non‐schizophrenic parents of Patients , 1997, Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica.

[22]  Working memory, attention, and communication disturbances in schizophrenia. , 1996 .

[23]  L. Siever,et al.  Validity of the family history method for identifying schizophrenia-related disorders , 1997, Psychiatry Research.

[24]  D. C. Fort.  Parent-child effects on performance, thinking, and communication in families of normal and schizophrenic sons. , 1990, The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis.