Communication deviance in adolescence and adulthood: a longitudinal study.

Measures of communication deviance (CD) on the TAT were obtained for a sample of nonpsychotically disturbed adolescents and repeated 15 years later. For both males and females, total amount of CD significantly increased from adolescence to adulthood. The proportion of certain types of CD in an individual's speech was relatively stable across time, but further analysis indicated that the phenomenon was significant only for the females. Low amounts of CD in adulthood were associated with absence of any psychiatric disturbance throughout the 15-year follow-up period.