title: Linguistic production and syntactic comprehension in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To explore linguistic abilities in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Specifically, the aims of this study were to: i) investigate microlinguistic (lexicon, morphology, syntax) and macrolinguistic (discourse coherence, pragmatics) dimensions of speech production and ii) evaluate syntactic comprehension skills in both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
  
  
  METHODS
  Linguistic performance of 30 Italian-speaking patients with schizophrenia, 30 participants with bipolar disorder and 30 healthy controls comparable for age and educational level has been assessed using a story-telling task and a computer-based test of syntactic comprehension.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In narrative production, compared with healthy participants, those with schizophrenia had slight problems in speech rate and deficits at both local and global discourse coherence, whereas patients with bipolar disorder showed reduced mean length of utterance. As regards syntactic comprehension, both groups of patients collected more grammatical errors than controls, but they differed with regard to the number and kind of grammatical construction they missed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Linguistic deficits have been detected in both groups of patients, being, however, more severe and generalized in schizophrenia than in bipolar disorder. Such results help us in improving our understanding of the potential psychopathological overlapping between these disorders.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Section of Psychiatry, InterUniversity Centre for Behavioural Neurosciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Perlini
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marini
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Garzitto
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Isola
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cerruti
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Marinelli
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rambaldelli
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ferro
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tomelleri
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dusi
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bellani
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tansella
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fabbro
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Brambilla
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D033262:Narration; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012660:Semantics