Language and Mind
Proceedings from the 32nd International Conference of the Croatian Applied Linguistics Society
Edited By Mihaela Matesic and Anita Memišević
Category fluency in Croatian-speaking patients with first-episode psychosis with schizophrenia features/symptoms (Petar Gabrić, Iva Kužina, Mija Vandek, Martina Sekulić Sović, Ninoslav Mimica, and Aleksandar Savić)
Extract
Petar Gabrić, Iva Kužina, Mija Vandek, Martina Sekulić Sović, Ninoslav Mimica, and Aleksandar Savić
Category fluency in Croatian-speaking patients with first-episode psychosis with schizophrenia features/symptoms/Semantische Wortflüssigkeit bei kroatisch sprechenden Erstpsychose-Patienten mit schizophrenen Merkmalen/Symptomen
Abstract: Despite extensive research, the picture of lexical-semantic deficits in schizophrenia remains to be illuminated. Furthermore, research in first-episode psychosis (FEP) with schizophrenia features/symptoms is lacking. By using the verbal fluency paradigm, it has recently been proposed that lexical-semantic deficits in schizophrenia might be caused by increased neural noise, resulting in stronger competition during lexical selection. The study recruited 22 FEP patients diagnosed with an acute schizophrenia-like psychotic disorder or acute polymorphic psychotic disorder with symptoms of schizophrenia according to ICD-10 criteria and 22 matched control subjects. Subjects were administered the category fluency task using two lexical-semantic categories: animals and trees. We hypothesized that (1) the patients would produce significantly fewer clustered words and significantly smaller clusters compared to control subjects and that (2) the patients would have a significantly higher switching score compared to control subjects. Our hypotheses were confirmed only in the animal fluency task, while no differences were observed in tree fluency. Our results indicate that there are disproportionate deficits in the animal and tree fluency tasks. FEP patients produced significantly fewer clustered words and significantly smaller clusters while also having a significantly higher switching score compared to healthy subjects (HS) in animal fluency, implying that FEP patients had difficulties in maintaining attention to a particular lexical-semantic subcategory....
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