Perception of Speech in Schizophrenia

Abstract

The study reported in this paper derived from an experimental investigation of anomalies of attention and perception found in schizophrenic patients (Chapman and McGhie, 1961, 1962). The application of an experimental battery of tests to a group of schizophrenic patients had shown that the short-term memory of schizophrenics is particularly vulnerable to interference by irrelevant stimuli. These tests assessed the schizophrenic patient's capacity to perceive and recall a series of non-meaningful auditory and visual stimuli, and therefore did not deal with conditions approximating to normal speech. The clinical material gathered from young schizophrenic patients in the course of our investigations did however amply illustrate some of their difficulties in the perception of speech. Since the present study was to a large extent suggested by the reports made by these patients, it may be pertinent to present here a selection of the verbatim accounts of how they found difficulty in comprehending other people's speech. These comments are selected from tape-recorded interviews with schizophrenic patients, each account having been given by a different patient.