title: Visual interaction and speech patterning in remitted and acute schizophrenic patients.
abstract: 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.
mesh_terms: 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