Laboratory for Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology, Harvard Commonwealth Research Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, 49 Hillside Street, Fall River, MA 02720, USA.
Schizophr Res. 2012 Sep;140(1-3):99-103. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2012.06.034. Epub 2012 Jul 21.
The intrusion of associations into speech in schizophrenia disrupts coherence and comprehensibility, a feature of formal thought disorder referred to as loosened associations. We have previously proposed that loosened associations may result from hyperactivity in semantic association networks, leading to an increased frequency of associated words appearing in speech. Using Computed Associations in Sequential Text (CAST) software to quantify the frequency of such associations in speech, we have reported more frequent normative associations in language samples from patients with schizophrenia and in individuals with schizotypal characteristics. The present study further examined this deviance in schizophrenia by studying normative associations in those who share genes with an individual with schizophrenia, (i.e. first-degree relatives of probands with schizophrenia; HR) but who do not have an illness. Familial high-risk participants (n=22), and controls (n=24) provided verbal responses to cards from the Thematic Apperception Test. CAST analysis revealed that HR used more associated words in their speech compared to controls. Furthermore, the frequency of normative word associations was positively correlated with dimensional and total scores of schizotypy derived from ratings of the structured interview for schizotypy, which confirms past research showing a relationship between schizotypy and hyperassociations. Our results suggest that some language disturbances in schizophrenia likely arise from an underlying psychopathological mechanism, hyperactivity of semantic associations.
精神分裂症患者的联想侵入言语会破坏连贯性和可理解性，这是一种形式思维障碍的特征，称为联想松散。我们之前提出，联想松散可能是由于语义联想网络的过度活跃，导致相关词汇在言语中出现的频率增加。我们使用计算联想在连续文本中的软件（CAST）来量化言语中这些联想的频率，我们报告了精神分裂症患者的语言样本和具有分裂型特征的个体中更频繁的正常联想。本研究通过研究与精神分裂症个体具有共同基因的个体（即精神分裂症患者的一级亲属；HR）中的正常联想，进一步研究了精神分裂症中的这种偏差。22 名 HR 参与者和 24 名对照组参与者对主题知觉测验的卡片进行了口头反应。CAST 分析显示，HR 比对照组在言语中使用了更多的相关词汇。此外，正常词联想的频率与从分裂型结构访谈的评分中得出的分裂型维度和总分呈正相关，这证实了过去的研究表明分裂型与过度联想之间存在关系。我们的研究结果表明，精神分裂症中的一些语言障碍可能源于潜在的精神病理学机制，即语义联想的过度活跃。
