Department of Psychology, University of California Riverside, United States.
Department of Psychological and Brain Science, Indiana University Bloomington, United States.
Schizophr Res. 2018 Jul;197:365-369. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2017.11.014. Epub 2017 Nov 16.
Since initial conceptualizations, schizophrenia has been thought to involve core disturbances in the ability to form complex, integrated ideas. Although this has been studied in terms of formal thought disorder, the level of involvement of altered latent semantic structure is less clear. To explore this question, we compared the personal narratives of adults with schizophrenia (n=200) to those produced by an HIV+ sample (n=55) using selected indices from Coh-Metrix. Coh-Metrix is a software system designed to compute various language usage statistics from transcribed written and spoken language documents. It differs from many other frequency-based systems in that Coh-Metrix measures a wide range of language processes, ranging from basic descriptors (e.g., total words) to indices assessing more sophisticated processes within sentences, between sentences, and across paragraphs (e.g., deep cohesion). Consistent with predictions, the narratives in schizophrenia exhibited less cohesion even after controlling for age and education. Specifically, the schizophrenia group spoke fewer words, demonstrated less connection between ideas and clauses, provided fewer causal/intentional markers, and displayed lower levels of deep cohesion. A classification model using only Coh-Metrix indices found language markers correctly classified participants in nearly three-fourths of cases. These findings suggest a particular pattern of difficulties cohesively connecting thoughts about oneself and the world results in a perceived lack of coherence in schizophrenia. These results are consistent with Bleuler's model of schizophrenia and offer a novel way to understand and measure alterations in thought and speech over time.
自最初的概念化以来，精神分裂症一直被认为涉及到形成复杂、综合的想法的核心能力障碍。尽管这已经在形式思维障碍方面进行了研究，但改变潜在语义结构的程度还不太清楚。为了探讨这个问题，我们使用 Coh-Metrix 的选定指标，将精神分裂症患者（n=200）的个人叙述与 HIV+ 样本（n=55）的个人叙述进行了比较。Coh-Metrix 是一种软件系统，旨在从转录的书面和口头语言文档中计算各种语言使用统计数据。它与许多其他基于频率的系统不同，因为 Coh-Metrix 测量了广泛的语言处理过程，从基本描述符（例如，总单词）到评估句子之间、句子之间和段落之间更复杂过程的索引（例如，深层衔接）。与预测一致，即使在控制年龄和教育程度后，精神分裂症患者的叙述也表现出较低的衔接性。具体来说，精神分裂症组说话的单词较少，思想和从句之间的连接较少，提供的因果/意图标记较少，深层衔接程度较低。仅使用 Coh-Metrix 指标的分类模型发现，语言标记可以正确地将参与者分类在近四分之三的情况下。这些发现表明，一种将自己和世界的想法连贯地联系起来的特殊困难模式导致了精神分裂症中感知到的不连贯性。这些结果与 Bleuler 的精神分裂症模型一致，并提供了一种新颖的方法来理解和衡量随着时间的推移思维和言语的变化。
