Associating semantic space abnormalities with formal thought disorder in schizophrenia: use of triadic comparisons.

Recent studies of schizophrenia have suggested that thought disorder results from abnormalities in semantic processing. In the following pilot study, the cognitive system used for organizing and associating concepts was examined using a triadic comparison task. The semantic maps of schizophrenia patients with high thought disorder (N = 5) were compared to that of schizophrenia patients with low levels of thought disorder (N = 5) and normal controls (N = 10) with multidimensional scaling analysis. At initial testing and at retest, patients with high levels of thought disorder exhibited consistently lower semantic goodness of fit scores and failed to map results of triadic comparisons along well-defined dimensions. Results suggest that thought disorder in schizophrenia is related to a disturbance in the organization of semantic networks.