Schizophrenia Patients Have Communication and Language Dysfunctions Mediated by the Right Hemisphere – Preliminary Study

Abstract

Introduction

Apart from cognitive impairments in schizophrenia, language dysfunction have been recognized in the earliest reports of the disorder. It has been of great importance in schizophrenia research since many symptoms of the illness are expressed in terms of language or are direct language dysfunctions themselves. It is known that patients with schizophrenia have difficulty to process semantic aspects of language, combining semantic and syntactic information as well as creating lexico-semantic associations. On the other hand, their ability to read and spell single words as well as vocabulary skills acquired early in life remain spared. There is evidence implying that language functions mediated by the right hemisphere may be disturbed in schizophrenia patients

Objectives

To assess language and communication dysfunctions with schizophrenia patients with the use of standardized neuropsychological tests battery the Right Hemisphere Language Battery – Polish Version (RHLB-PL).

Methods

40 schizophrenia patients and 39 healthy controls were enrolled to the study. All of the participants were assessed by the Right Hemisphere Language Battery – Polish Version (RHLB-PL) and schizophrenia patients by PANSS.

Results

Schizophrenia patients performed poorer in most of higher order language functions mediated by the right hemisphere. They not only experienced difficulties with comprehending implicit information (p=.034), understanding humor (p=.002), giving interpretation of metaphors (p=.000), understanding emotional (p=.000) and language prosody (p=.000) and discourse (p=.000), but also had problems to withhold inappropriate commentaries in course of assessment (p=.000).

Conclusions

The results indicate that there are significant differences between schizophrenia – patients and normal controls in extralinguistic processing.