Cohesion in schizophrenic narratives, revisited.

Many investigations into schizophrenic speech dysfunction have not taken into account the mechanisms for normal speech production. Moreover, not all investigators have ensured that schizophrenic subjects belong to that group which does show deviant speech structures. We chose speech-disordered subjects who were asked to produce a narrative after viewing a short videostory. This provided a context in which to interpret even deviant narratives and in which to determine cohesive ties. It proved necessary to modify Rochester and Martin's categories of cohesive ties. No significant difference was found in the use of such ties overall. However, when examined category by category a pattern of different usage is evident, showing that schizophrenics suffer from a true dysfunction in narrative production.