Thought disorder in schizophrenia. Testing models through confirmatory factor analysis

Theoretical and empirical models of thought disorder (ThD) were tested thro ugh Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). A sample of 253 DSM-III-R acute sch izophrenic patients consecutively admitted was studied. PI semistructured i nterview for schizophrenia was used for diagnosis, and ThD was assessed by means of the Thought, Language, and Communication scale (TLC). Nine ThD mod els comprising the 18 symptoms of the TLC were tested (ranging from a null model to a six-factor model). The six-dimension model achieved the best fit to the data, although no perfect fit was found. ThD dimensions included in this model were Disorganization, Negative, Idiosyncratic, Semantic, Attent ional, and Referential dimensions. The TLC was close to capture adequately these underlying constructs. The Disorganization and the Negative dimension s received more validity on conceptual and psychometric grounds than the re maining dimensions. Thought Disorder multidimensional models fitted the dat a better than one-dimension models. Thought Disorder dimensions would be po tential markers for biological, neurophysiological, and neuropsychological studies of schizophrenic disorder.