Investigation of gestural and pantomime performance in chronic schizophrenic inpatients

The present study compared the performance on apraxia tests and additional motor tasks between medicated chronic schizophrenic inpatients (n = 21) and healthy subjects (n = 21). Praxis testing did not reveal a clear-cut apractic syndrome in the patient group. The most striking difference between patients and healthy controls was the more frequent use of body parts as object (BPO) by schizophrenic patients (P < 0.0003). There was no significant difference in psychopathology between subgroups classified according to their BPO performance, although a tendency towards a difference in duration of illness and the actual hospitalization period existed between BPO subgroups. Schizophrenic patients performed more poorly than controls in frontal motor tasks: sequencing, including oral sequential movements, and reciprocal innervation. Frontal motor task performance tended to be related to the negative dimension of schizophrenia in accordance with previous studies. The data do not support the assumption that BPO performance is part of a multidimensional concrete attitude in schizophrenic patients. Nevertheless, this peculiarity in motor behaviour might be a link between neurophysiology and psychopathological phenomenology in schizophrenia. We therefore suggest further investigation focusing the performance of object-related pantomime movements in schizophrenic patients.