Word associations and schizophrenic symptoms

This study investigated the relationship between performance on a word association task and positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Subjects were fifty inpatients with diagnoses of schizophrenia who were rated for positive and negative symptoms using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. In a single word association task, negative symptoms correlated significantly with idiosyncratic responses; correlations with positive symptoms were not significant. When asked to place their stimulus word-association pairs in the context of a meaningful sentence, 65% of positive syndrome patients and 53% of negative syndrome patients were able to do so in such a way that their idiosyncratic associations were rated as meaningful in the context of a sentence. Negative symptoms were correlated with idiosyncratic associations that could not be used in a related sentence while positive symptoms were correlated with the inability to use common associations in a related sentence. Differential ability to use common and idiosyncratic associations in a related sentence suggests the possibility of two different patterns of language disturbance associated with positive and negative symptoms.