Language Structure and Predictability in Overinclusive Patients

Deviant language behaviour is the primary basis for the clinical inference of thought disorder. Bleuler (1950), for example, emphasizes loose associations and disjointed utterances. Mayer-Gross, Slater, and Roth (1960) state that thought disorder is indicated by such conversation characteristics as ‘woolly vagueness', in-consequential following of side issues, direction by alliteration, analogies or clang associations, and the use of words out of context. However, psychological studies have typically used measures of disordered thinking derived from performance on categorization tasks. Such tasks do not obviously measure the abnormality which is definitive for the clinician. The study reported here was an attempt to relate measures of language effectiveness to overinclusive thought disorder.