Silva Angelica, Limongi Roberto, MacKinley Michael, Palaniyappan Lena
Robarts Research Institute, London, ON, Canada.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.
Schizophr Bull Open. 2021 Mar 15;2(1):sgab010. doi: 10.1093/schizbullopen/sgab010. eCollection 2021 Jan.
This study aimed to shed light on the linguistic style affecting the communication discourse in first-episode schizophrenia (FES) by investigating the analytic thinking index in relation to clinical scores of conceptual and thought disorganization (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, PANSS-P2 and Thought and Language Index, TLI). Using robust Bayesian modeling, we report three major findings: (1) FES subjects showed reduced analytic thinking, exhibiting a less categorical linguistic style than healthy control (HC) subjects (Bayes factor, BF > 1000), despite using the same proportion of function and content words as HCs; (2) the lower the analytic thinking score, the higher the symptoms scores of conceptual disorganization (PANSS-P2, BF = 22.66) and global disorganization of thinking (TLI, BF = 112.73); (3) the linguistic style is a better predictor of conceptual disorganization than the cognitive measure of processing speed in schizophrenia (SZ). These findings provide an objectively detectable linguistic style with a focus on Natural Language Processing Analytics of transcribed speech samples of patients with SZ that require no clinical judgment. These findings also offer a crucial insight into the primacy of linguistic structural disruption in clinically ascertained disorganized thinking in SZ. Our work contributes to an emerging body of literature on the psychopathology of SZ using a first-order lexeme-level analysis and a hypothesis-driven approach. At a utilitarian level, this has implications for improving educational and social outcomes in patients with SZ.
本研究旨在通过调查与概念和思维紊乱的临床评分（阳性和阴性症状量表，PANSS-P2以及思维和语言指数，TLI）相关的分析性思维指数，来阐明影响首发精神分裂症（FES）交流话语的语言风格。使用稳健的贝叶斯模型，我们报告了三个主要发现：（1）FES受试者的分析性思维减少，与健康对照（HC）受试者相比，表现出分类性较低的语言风格（贝叶斯因子，BF>1000），尽管他们使用的功能词和实词比例与HC相同；（2）分析性思维得分越低，概念紊乱（PANSS-P2，BF=22.66）和思维整体紊乱（TLI，BF=112.73）的症状得分越高；（3）在精神分裂症（SZ）中，语言风格比处理速度的认知测量更能预测概念紊乱。这些发现提供了一种客观可检测的语言风格，重点是对SZ患者转录语音样本进行自然语言处理分析，无需临床判断。这些发现还为SZ临床确诊的紊乱思维中语言结构破坏的首要地位提供了关键见解。我们的工作通过一阶词元级分析和假设驱动方法，为关于SZ精神病理学的新兴文献做出了贡献。在功利层面上，这对改善SZ患者的教育和社会成果具有重要意义。
