Language production and thought disorder in schizophrenia.

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Abstract
The authors examined the relationship between language production (LP) processes and thought disorder. Thirty-nine schizophrenic or schizoaffective participants completed tasks measuring dis- course planning, monitoring, and grammatical-phonological encoding, as well as an interview used to rate thought disorder. The authors found that different LP processes were differentially related to different thought disorder subtypes. Incompetent references were strongly and selectively related to discourse planning performance, in addition, word approximations-neologisms were strongly and specifically associated with grammatical-phonological encoding performance. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for understanding the multifaceted nature and etiology of thought disorder. In light of the wealth of research devoted to the study of thought disorder in schizophrenia, progress in elucidating its etiological basis has not been as rapid as one would expect. As characterized by Maher ( 1991, p. 438), "the study of schizo- phrenic language has proceeded by fits and starts; hypotheses appear from many different sources, cause a brief stir as they are tested, and then sink from sight as permanently as pebbles thrown into a pond." Despite Maher's pessimistic appraisal, we believe that prior work on thought disorder can potentially lead to major advances in unraveling its etiology. The major imped- iment to progress in this area may be the lack of comprehensive, yet precise, models of thought disorder. Previous theories may each be able to explain different dimensions of thought disorder. What is missing is a way to integrate across diverse theories.

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