Loose associations and disordered speech patterns in chronic schizophrenia.

The present research involves the development and utilization of a method to evaluate the free speech of chronic schizophrenic patients to measure aspects of thought disorder. Using this technique, two samples (one chronically hospitalized, the other nonhospitalized) of 15 chronic schizophrenic subjects each studied and compared. Severe types of looseness of association were not a prominent finding in the patients studied. On several of the other categories of speech patterns in investigated, multiyear hospitalized chronic schizophrenics were found to have significantly higher scores than a sample of chronic schizophrenics living in the community. This included a measure of paucity of speech, of perseveration, of repetition, and a measure of overally deviant verbalizations. The chronic schizophrenic patients generally showed high degrees of perseveration and paucity of speech, variables which may be related to impoverished thinking. The significance of these results is analyzed and discussed, with several aspects of the data suggesting that the differences may be due to severity of illness. The phenomenological scoring system developed and utilized is found to be reliable and seems to represent a useful tool for the study of many aspects of the schizophrenic patient.