Visual interaction and speech patterning in remitted and acute schizophrenic patients.
Previous research has suggested that schizophrenic patients sometimes show abnormal patterns of visual interaction and speech. Several important questions remain, however, and the present study was designed for two purposes; to examine the behaviour of remitted patients; and to follow up a suggestion that acute patients show abnormalities only in personal encounters. Three groups of subjects, remitted schizophrenic patients, acute schizophrenic patients and a control group of psychiatrically normal chest patients, took part, and each subject held two conversations with a nurse, one about a 'personal' topic and one about a 'neutral' topic. Unexpectedly, the remitted and acute groups were both found to behave normally, in both conversations. Taken together with previous evidence, the findings thus confirmed that acute schizophrenic patients respond situation-specifically and sometimes behave normally, but no further interpretation of the data was possible since the manipulation of topic did not have the expected effects.
D000208:Acute Disease; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005133:Eye Movements; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D012075:Remission, Spontaneous; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D012564:Schizophrenic Language; D012919:Social Behavior; D014705:Verbal Behavior