| Abstract: | 40 hospitalized schizophrenics and 40 volunteers from the community (age range for both groups 17-59 yrs) listened to sentences in which a click was embedded. 20 schizophrenic Ss and 20 normal Ss were asked to reproduce the sentences and indicate precisely where the click occurred. The remaining Ss were given the previously heard sentences and asked to recognize the click locations. Results show that schizophrenic Ss tend to be less accurate than normal Ss in locating the clicks. However, this inferior performance was not due to an inability to use syntactic rules. Rather, the pattern of errors demonstrated that schizophrenic Ss distinguish between sentences which are acoustically identical but syntactically distinct, and that this distinction is maintained under response conditions with varying emphases on sentence retrieval. It is concluded that schizophrenics appear to use syntax as a basis for sentence processing at least to the same extent as normal Ss do. (27 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
