Referential communication in people with recent-onset schizophrenia-spectrum disorders

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Schizophrenia (SZ) is associated with language production deficits.
• Few studies investigate language in real-time collaborative interactions for SZ.
• Understanding referential communication in SZ is crucial for social cognition research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine referential communication adjustments in individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) during a collaborative task.
• To investigate the relationship between these adjustments and theory of mind (ToM) abilities.
• To analyze differences in verbal production strategies between SZ and healthy controls (HC).

Main Methods:

• Utilized a referential communication paradigm with movie characters.
• Participants with SZ and HC described characters to a partner for identification and placement.
• Assessed participants' theory of mind (ToM) performance.

Main Results:

• Healthy controls (HC) adjusted information-giving based on character familiarity, correlating with ToM performance.
• Individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) showed significantly reduced or absent adjustments.
• SZ participants primarily used descriptive information, unlike HC who combined descriptive and movie-related details.

Conclusions:

• Schizophrenia (SZ) is linked to impaired adaptive referential communication in interactive settings.
• The lack of adjustment in SZ may relate to difficulties in perspective-taking and social cognition.
• Findings highlight challenges in collaborative verbal interactions for individuals with schizophrenia.