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The Diagnosis of Schizophrenia by Language Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

William I. Fraser ,
Kathleen M. King ,
Philip Thomas  and
Robert E. Kendell
William I. Fraser*
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychiatry, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Morningside Park, Edinburgh EH10 5HF
Kathleen M. King
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychiatry, Royal Edinburgh Hospital
Philip Thomas
Affiliation:
Manchester Royal Infirmary, Hathersage Road, Manchester M13 9WL (formerly Lecturer in Psychiatry, Edinburgh University)
Robert E. Kendell
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

Our aim was to test the findings of a study which claimed that if the syntactic structure of schizophrenic speech were subjected to a detailed linguistic analysis, clear differences would be demonstrated between schizophrenic, manic and control populations. It was confirmed that schizophrenics do have less syntactically complex speech which contains more errors. Using linguistic variables in a discriminant function analysis, it was possible to predict diagnoses correctly in 79% of cases.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 148 , Issue 3 , March 1986 , pp. 275 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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References

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