Associating semantic space abnormalities with formal thought disorder in schizophrenia: Use of triadic comparisons

Recent studies of schizophrenia have suggested that thought disorder result s from abnormalities in semantic processing. In the following pilot study, the cognitive system used for organizing and associating concepts was exami ned using a triadic comparison task. The semantic maps of schizophrenia pat ients with high thought disorder (N = 5) were compared to that of schizophr enia patients with low levels of thought disorder (N = 5) and normal contro ls (N = 10) with multidimensional scaling analysis. At initial testing and at retest, patients with high levels of thought disorder exhibited consiste ntly lower semantic goodness of fit scores and failed to map results of tri adic comparisons along well-defined dimensions. Results suggest that though t disorder in schizophrenia is related to a disturbance in the organization of semantic networks.