Morice R, McNicol D
Schizophr Bull. 1986;12(2):239-51. doi: 10.1093/schbul/12.2.239.
Similar changes in the spoken language of schizophrenic patients were demonstrated in two separate studies. Schizophrenic patients used less depth of clausal embedding and fewer reduced relative clauses; they uttered more semantically deviant sentences and were more dysfluent than either manic patients or control subjects. They appeared to demonstrate a language impairment characterized especially by reduced syntactic complexity. Four linguistic variables in a discriminant analysis produced an overall diagnostic confidence for schizophrenia in "grouped" subjects of 87 percent, replicating at 83 percent for "ungrouped" subjects from a separate study. These results demonstrate the stability of language changes in schizophrenia, together with acceptable levels of diagnostic sensitivity and specificity. Currently, the possible diagnostic utility of language analysis is constrained by its time-consuming nature. The issue of whether the language changes represent a specific (linguistic) or general cognitive impairment is being addressed in a second phase of the current study.
两项独立研究均表明精神分裂症患者的口语存在类似变化。精神分裂症患者使用的从句嵌入深度较浅，简化关系从句较少；他们说出的语义异常句子更多，且比躁狂症患者或对照组受试者更不流畅。他们似乎表现出一种语言障碍，其特征尤其在于句法复杂性降低。判别分析中的四个语言变量对“分组”受试者的精神分裂症总体诊断置信度为87%，另一项独立研究中“未分组”受试者的复制诊断置信度为83%。这些结果证明了精神分裂症语言变化的稳定性，以及可接受的诊断敏感性和特异性水平。目前，语言分析的可能诊断效用受到其耗时特性的限制。当前研究的第二阶段正在探讨语言变化是代表特定（语言）还是一般认知障碍的问题。
