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Confusion between silent and overt reading in schizophrenia
1Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UPR 9075, Bron, France. franck@isc.cnrs.fr
Schizophrenia Research
|March 9, 2000
Summary
Schizophrenic patients struggle to distinguish between speaking aloud and thinking words. This difficulty in monitoring inner versus overt speech may contribute to auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Schizophrenia is a complex mental disorder.
- Auditory hallucinations are a common symptom.
- Self-monitoring of speech is crucial for distinguishing internal thoughts from external speech.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate speech monitoring deficits in schizophrenic patients.
- To assess the ability to differentiate between overt (spoken) and covert (silent) speech.
- To explore the link between speech monitoring and hallucinations.
Main Methods:
- Participants read words silently or aloud.
- A 5-minute delay followed the reading task.
- Patients identified words from a new list, indicating if they were read silently, aloud, or not presented.
Main Results:
- Schizophrenic patients significantly misattributed silently read words as spoken aloud.
- Patients also incorrectly identified absent words as having been spoken aloud.
- A bias towards reporting silent speech as overt was observed.
Conclusions:
- Schizophrenic patients exhibit impaired ability to discriminate between inner and overt speech.
- This deficit in speech monitoring may be a contributing factor to the development of auditory hallucinations.
- Findings support the role of self-monitoring dysfunction in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.