title: [Semantic satiation and language disorders in schizophrenia].
abstract: The term semantic satiation refers to the subjective experience of loss of meaning of a word as a result of prolonged repetition of that word. Satiation is a general property of neural activity: it reflects a spreading of activation in semantic networks and some type of inhibitory process. The aim of this paper is to present the hypothesis about the influence of the semantic satiation upon the language disorders in schizophrenia. This article contains a review of semantic satiation experiments in healthy participants, it also deals with the semantic priming paradigm, which was usually used to investigate this effect. The author presents a theoretical hypothesis about the connection between semantic satiation and language disorders. This hypothesis is based on a review of semantic priming experiments in schizophrenia, which provides the evidence that for schizophrenic patients the priming effect is larger than for healthy individuals. This hyperpriming effect suggests that schizophrenic patients are more susceptible to semantic satiation than healthy individuals, which may be a likely cause of a few of schizophrenia--related language disorders. Satiation may prove to be a useful tool for exploring the thought and language disorders in schizophrenia. Some empirical investigations should be made to verify the hypothesis which is described in this paper.
authors.affiliation: Instytutu Psychologii UJ.
authors.forename: Katarzyna
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Prochwicz
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall; D012307:Risk Factors; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012564:Schizophrenic Language; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D013342:Stuttering / Q000209:etiology; D013850:Thinking; D014705:Verbal Behavior