Pragmatic Language and Schizophrenia: Interpretation of Metaphors (original) (raw)
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Metaphor Processing Dysfunctions in Schizophrenia Patients With and Without Substance Use Disorders
Frontiers in Psychiatry
Background: Patients with schizophrenia have difficulties comprehending metaphors, which significantly impedes communication. However, this topic has not been thoroughly studied in people with a dual diagnosis. On this basis, we formulated two research aims: a) to compare the ability to comprehend metaphors in schizophrenia patients without (SZ) and with substance use disorder (SZ-SUD) and b) to determine the relationship between the processing of metaphorical content and the severity of psychopathological symptoms in both clinical groups. Methods: A total of 40 individuals with SZ and 40 individuals with SZ-SUD took part in the study. The control group was composed of 40 individuals without a psychiatric or neurological diagnosis. Four subtests from the Right Hemisphere Language Battery (Picture Metaphor Test, Written Metaphor Test, Picture Metaphor Explanation Test, Written Metaphor Explanation Test) were used to measure the ability to understand and explain metaphors. Results: Both groups of individuals with schizophrenia (SZ and SZ-SUD) scored lower than individuals from the control group on all tests of metaphor processing. However, no differences were observed between the two clinical groups. SZ-SUD patients had better results for Picture Metaphor Explanation than for Written Metaphor Explanation. Negative symptoms were found to be significant predictors of difficulties with understanding and explaining metaphors. Conclusion: Individuals with schizophrenia, regardless of their substance use disorder (SUD) status, exhibit impaired metaphorical content processing. SUD in schizophrenia is not associated with significant impairments in understanding and explaining metaphorical content. Moreover, impairments in processing metaphorical content are associated with more severe negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
Figurative language processing in schizophrenia
2019
When patients diagnosed with schizophrenia process figurative language, they often make literality and/or concreteness mistakes. These mistakes can be related to certain cognitive functions that are underperforming or impaired in schizophrenia. This research found that cognitive functions that often present deficits in patients with schizophrenia (PwS) are working memory, cognitive control, cognitive flexibility and ToM. The aim of this study is to provide evidence of the cognitive impairments that might be underlying poorer figurative language processing in schizophrenia, as well as to shed a light on the cognitive functions that might be at play when figurative language is processed. Disclosing the cognitive functions that can be underperforming in schizophrenia can be relevant for therapeutics and for the development of more effective forms of treatment for the disorder. The present thesis analyses figurative language processing (metaphor, logical metonymy and irony) and theory o...
Metaphor and Metacommunication in Schizophrenic Language
Since the beginning of this century, psychiatrists and linguists, assuming a correlation between disordered talk and disordered cognition, haae sought to deztise language tests with diagnostic fficiency for mental 'illnesses'. Schizophrenia in particular has been assumed to be characterized by disorders of cohesion, of reference, and of symbolization. Much of this work is flawed by its a priori assumptions about the reality of the category of schizophrenia qnd about the relation between 'norntel' (non-figurative, 'logical') and 'deviant' (figurative, 'magical') uses of language, as well as by particular methodological problems
Language Sciences, 2014
Sixteen patients with schizophrenia are presented with 'literal', 'conventional metaphor', 'novel metaphor' and 'unrelated' expressions in minimal and sentence contexts. In both contexts, these patients have greater difficulty in processing conventional and novel metaphor expressions than in processing literal expressions. However, in the sentence context, performance improves significantly for conventional metaphors as compared with that for novel metaphors. The results are interpreted in the light of Rachel L.C. Mitchell and Tim J. Crow's theory of abnormal lateralization and right hemisphere dysfunction in schizophrenia. The difficulty in processing metaphors in general and novel metaphors in particular may be due to right hemisphere dysfunction in schizophrenic patients. Interestingly, 'task difficulty' is found to be an important parameter modulating metaphor comprehension in patients with schizophrenia and, therefore, may also be a crucial factor in deciding the hemispheric bias of metaphor processing.
Understanding Minds and Understanding Communicated Meanings in Schizophrenia
Mind and Language, 2002
The work reported in this paper investigated the putative functional dependence of pragmatic language skills on general mind-reading capacity by testing theory-of-mind abilities and understanding of non-literal speech in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy controls. Patients showed difficulties with inferring mental states on a false-belief picture-sequencing task and with understanding metaphors and irony on a story-comprehension task. These difficulties were independent of low verbal IQ and a more generalised problem inhibiting prepotent information. Understanding of metaphors and understanding of irony made significant and independent contributions to discriminating patients from controls, suggesting that metaphor and irony make distinct pragmatic demands.
Schizophrenia Research: Cognition, 2019
Previous studies suggest that understanding of non-literal expressions, and in particular metaphors, can be impaired in people with schizophrenia; although it is not clear why. We explored metaphor comprehension capacity using a novel picture selection paradigm; we compared task performance between people with schizophrenia and healthy comparator subjects and we further examined the relationships between the ability to interpret figurative expressions non-literally and performance on a number of other cognitive tasks. Eye-tracking was used to examine task strategy. We showed that even when IQ, years of education, and capacities for theory of mind and associative learning are factored in as covariates, patients are significantly more likely to interpret metaphorical expressions literally, despite eye-tracking findings suggesting that patients are following the same interpretation strategy as healthy controls. Inhibitory control deficits are likely to be one of multiple factors contributing to the poorer performance of our schizophrenia group on the metaphor trials of the picture selection task.
THE COMPREHENSION OF IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS IN SCHIZOPHRENIC PATIENTS
Schizophrenia Research, 2008
Recent fMRI and TMS studies on idiom comprehension have shown that the prefrontal cortex is involved in idiom processing. Since schizophrenic patients exhibit prefrontal structural changes and dysexecutive behavioural deficits, we hypothesised an impairment in idiom comprehension, correlating with performance on executive tasks.
PubMed, 2016
Aim: Over past few decades, studies displayed Theory of Mind (ToM) as a system, including cognitive and affective features, rather than an unitary process. Within domains defining social cognition, ToM stands for the best predictor of poor social functioning in schizophrenia. The current study aimed to explore competence in ToM tasks, in metaphorical and idiomatic language identification tasks and in a conversational rules observance test, as well as relationship with social functioning, in a group of outpatients suffering from schizophrenia. METHODS.: 30 outpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia and 24 healthy subjects have been recruited. Both groups underwent TIB as premorbid IQ evaluation, PANSS, Theory of Mind Picture Sequencing Task, a metaphors and idiomatic expressions comprehension test and a conversational test. Social functioning was assessed with PSP. Results.Mean values of premorbid IQ showed no significant difference between patients and control group. In ToM and pragmatic competence tasks, differences between groups resulted in high significance, due to patients' lower performance. A correlation between metaphors and idiomatic expressions comprehension and second order false beliefs was detected. PSP showed a correlation with PANSS and cognitive-ToM, whereas leaving aside affective-ToM. Conclusions: Results showed how people affected with schizophrenia, in stable clinical condition, do have clear impairments in ToM and figurative language comprehension assignments. In our theoretical framework, correlation arisen between cognitive-ToM, pragmatic deficits, clinical status and social functioning level suggests usefulness of rehabilitative interventions to recover metacognitive functions and pragmatic abilities, in order to reduce social disability in schizophrenia.
Metaphor processing in high and low schizotypal individuals
Psychiatry Research, 2010
Two hypotheses were considered regarding the relationship between positive schizotypy and metaphor processing. On the basis of continuity between schizophrenia and schizotypy, high schizotypal individuals would be expected to be impaired at metaphor processing. However, given the right hemisphere processing bias that has been associated with positive schizotypy, they would be expected to be superior at metaphor processing. A story completion task in which participants judged the appropriateness of literal and metaphoric statements was administered to 30 high and 29 low schizotypal individuals. Contrary to both hypotheses, groups did not differ in their ability to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate statements, whether literal or metaphoric. However, the high schizotypal group demonstrated a less conservative response bias; they were more likely than the low schizotypal group to identify a statement as appropriate, whether it was or was not. Implications of these results for our understanding of language processing in schizophrenia and schizotypy are discussed.