Affective reactivity of language symptoms, startle responding, and inhibition in schizophrenia

The speech of some schizophrenia patients becomes markedly more disordered when negative affect is aroused. The authors tested associations between af fective reactivity of speech and responsiveness and inhibition on an acoust ic startle task in a sample of 27 outpatients. Patients whose language was reactive to negative affect showed significantly higher initial startle amp litudes than those whose language was not reactive. However, they also show ed greater habituation to repeated startle stimuli over trials, even after differences in initial amplitudes were controlled statistically. These find ings suggest that affective reactivity of speech is associated with higher initial startle responsiveness but also with greater habituation and, conve rsely, that patients who are relatively nonreactive to excitatory affective and sensory stimuli are also less reactive to inhibitory input.