Looseness of associations in acute schizophrenia

To study looseness of associations and other theoretically relevant variables of speech pathology, 51 acute psychiatric patients, including 26 schizophrenics, were studied at the acute phase of their disorder by means of a free verbalization interview. The results on these 51 patients during the acute period were: 1. There were clear differences between the schizophrenic patient group and the control patient group, the overall index of deviant verbalizations being significant at the .001 level. 2. Many types of looseness were found in non-schizophrenic patients as well as in schizophrenics. Except at the very mildest levels, however, the variants of overt looseness were strikingly more frequent in occurrence and severe in degree in the schizophrenic group (p smaller than .01). 3. Gaps in communication, vagueness of ideas and blocking, though present to some degree in our control group, were much more common in the schizophrenic sample (p smaller than .001). 4. In the control group of patients, private meanings (including neologisms), repetition and perseveration were extremely rare, and current delusional thinking virtually non-existent. Private meanings and current delusional thinking were conspicuously present in the schizophrenic sample; repetition and perseveration were present to a mild degree in this acute schizophrenic sample. 5. Schizophrenic patients tend to show more looseness of associations when faced with a request to talk about topics not related to their illness.