COMMUNICATION DISTURBANCES IN THE NATURAL SPEECH OF SCHIZOPHRENIC-PATIENTS AND NONSCHIZOPHRENIC PARENTS OF PATIENTS

Subclinical communication disturbances in the relatives of schizophren ic patients appear to be heterogeneous in both form and origin. The Co mmunication Disturbances Index (CDI) was applied to the natural speech of stable schizophrenic out-patients, non-schizophrenic parents of pa tients, and control subjects. The parents of schizophrenic patients di splayed more frequent overall instances of communication failure in th eir speech than the controls. The specific types of disturbance that w ere more frequent were structural lack of clarity, vague references an d ambiguous word meanings. The parents did not differ significantly fr om the patients with regard to total CDI ratings. However, patients ma de more frequent missing-information references than parents, and pare nts made more frequent vague references than patients. High CDI scores in parents were associated with more severe lifetime core positive sy mptoms in their patient offspring.