CONTEXTUAL INSENSITIVITY IN THOUGHT DISORDERED SCHIZOPHRENIC-PATIENTS- EVIDENCE FROM PAUSES IN SPONTANEOUS SPEECH

The distribution of pauses in spontaneous speech of schizophrenic pati ents was studied. Normal control subjects and schizophrenic patients w ithout thought disorder pause more frequently before nouns not suggest ed by the context, and less frequently before nouns suggested by the c ontext. No context dependency of the pauses before nouns was found in thought-disordered schizophrenic patients. The data are interpreted in terms of a reduced signal-to-noise ratio in semantic associative netw orks responsible for lexical access in thought-disordered schizophreni c patients.