Impoverished written responses and negative features of schizophrenia

Repetition in the written language of schizophrenics and its possible relationships to other aspects of schizophrenic disorders are not well understood. We investigated repetitiousness in written utterances, finding schizophrenic subjects to be more repetitive than affective controls and normal controls. Over-all, written repetitiousness was more strongly correlated with psychopathologic features than oral repetitiousness. As in previous work, thought-disordered schizophrenic subjects produced the most repetitive responses. Poverty of content and illogical thinking were correlated with scores for written repetition. Measures of other negative features, disturbed mental functioning and motor behavior were also associated with repetitiousness in both written and oral modes. That these negative features are linked (namely, linguistic repetitiousness, negative formal thought disorder, voluntary motor abnormalities, and deficient mental functioning) is consistent with Crow's concept of a defect syndrome (Type 2) in schizophrenia.