Dm. Barch et H. Berenbaum, LANGUAGE GENERATION IN SCHIZOPHRENIA AND MANIA - THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG VERBOSITY, SYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY, AND PAUSING, Journal of psycholinguistic research, 26(4), 1997, pp. 401-412
We examined the relationships among verbosity, syntactic complexity an
d pausing in the speech of 21 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Men
tal Disorders (3rd ed., rev.) (DSM-III-R) diagnosed schizophrenic part
icipants and 19 DSM-III-R diagnosed manic participants. We found that
less verbosity was associated with both less syntactic complexity and
greater pausing. In addition, less syntactic complexity was associated
with greater pausing. The strength of these associations did not diff
er significantly between the two diagnostic groups. We propose that de
ficits in verbosity syntactic complexity, and pausing are all related
to a disturbance in message generation. We discuss the consistency of
this hypothesis with previous research linking information processing
and frontal lobe deficits to disturbances in verbosity syntactic compl
exity, and pausing.