Expressed emotion and language disturbances in parents of stable schizophrenia patients

Nineteen healthy parents of long-term schizophrenia outpatients were assessed for levels of expressed emotion (EE) and for characteristics of communication style which are putative markers of vulnerability to schizophrenia. We administered measures of communication deviance, linguistic reference performance, global disorganization, and positive formal thought disorder. Parents high in EE showed significantly poorer linguistic reference performance and greater disorganization in their speech than parents low in EE. These findings support the idea that high EE in some individuals may be associated with cognitive characteristics indicative of a vulnerability to schizophrenia, and this may account in part for the well-established association between EE level in parents and prognosis in patients.