Prosody and lexical accuracy in flat affect schizophrenia

To test the hypothesis that hat affect in schizophrenia involves a motor-ex pressive deficiency, but not an emotional deficiency, we compared the acous tic properties of speech that al-e used to express emotion with the emotion al content of the words. DSM-III-R schizophrenic patients were divided into flat (N = 20) and nun-flat affect (N = 26) groups on the basis of rating-s cale scores. Twenty normal subjects also were included. Subjects were recor ded on audio tape as they described a happy and a sad experience for about 10 min. The recordings were analyzed acoustically for fluency and for two t ypes of prosody: inflection and emphasis. Words from transcriptions of the recordings were sorted by content analysis software into psychologically me aningful categories; we compared 'pleasurc' and 'distress' word categories. Patients with flat affect spoke with less inflection, and were less fluent . However, they were similar to the other groups in the rate at which they used 'pleasure' words to describe happy experiences and 'distress' words to describe sad experiences. The behavioral deficiency in flat affect appears to be restricted to reduced activity in communicative motor channels. Othe r aspects of emotion processing seem intact. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Irel and Ltd. All rights reserved.