| dc.description.abstract | Schizophrenia spectrum disorder is a disorder that affects several aspects of language and
cognition are affected. In the present study we examined the usage of coherence relations
expressed by a connective. A coherence relation is a conceptual relation between two phrases
or two sentences. Earlier research found that some coherence relations are less complex than
others. The question answered in this study is whether there are differences in the usage of
coherence relations expressed by a connective between schizophrenia spectrum disorder
subjects and healthy controls. We used transcripts of interviews of twenty participants from
the PRAAT research for the present study. All connectives expressing a coherence relation
were marked and for each connective we determined a coherence relation. After that, all total
amounts of the different coherence relations were compared between the two groups. The
percentage connectives of all words is 3.63% in the schizophrenia spectrum disorder group
and 3,71% in the healthy control group. Relations containing the primitive ‘negative’,
‘positive’, ‘temporal’ and ‘objective’ differ significantly between the two groups. Relations
which contain the primitive negative are used more often by healthy controls, in contrast to
relations which contain the primitive positive, which are used more frequently by subjects
with schizophrenia spectrum disorder. Relations which are temporal are used more often by
the subjects with schizophrenia spectrum disorder as are relations which contain the primitive
objective. The differences in the use of the negative, positive and objective connectives were
as expected. The difference in the use of temporal connectives was, however, contrary to our
expectations. It is not clear how this could be explained. If we look at the combinations of
different primitives, only the combinations of ‘positive-temporal-objective-basic order’ and
‘negative-non causal’ differ significantly. The first combination is used more often by
subjects with schizophrenia spectrum disorder and the second combination by healthy
controls. Schizophrenia spectrum disorder subjects probably use the first combination more
often because they use more temporal connectives in general. For the ‘negative-non causal’
this is presumably because of the fact that the combination negative and non-causal is less
complex than the combination negative and causal. Therefore the latter finding is as expected. | |
