Chronographic speech patterns of acutely psychotic patients. A preliminary note

This study was a preliminary attempt to explore the likelihood that, for psychiatric patients, amount of vocal activity (relative to silence) reflects degree of psychopathology and change with treatment. Five acute schizophrenic patients (two men and three women) were each seen in three interviews by one of two interviewers. After each interview, the interviewer evaluated the extent of his patient's pathology in terms of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, and he and the patient separately completed a questionnaire designed to elicit their perceptions of the interview. The results reveal that the relative amounts of the patients' vocal activity were negatively related to the interviewers' ratings of their general level of psychopathology and were also related to several aspects of their perceptions and the interviewers' perceptions of the interview. However, the number of interviews per patient was too few to permit an evaluation of treatment effects.