Contextual Insensitivity in Thought-Disordered Schizophrenic Patients: Evidence from Pauses in Spontaneous Speech

The distribution of pauses in spontaneous speech of schizophrenic patients was studied. Normal control subjects and schizophrenic patients without thought disorder pause more frequently before nouns not suggested by the context, and less frequently before nouns suggested by the context. No context dependency of the pauses before nouns was found in thought-disordered schizophrenic patients. The data are interpreted in terms of a reduced signal-to-noise ratio in semantic associative networks responsible for lexical access in thought-disordered schizophrenic patients.

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