Prosody and schizophrenia. Objective acoustic measurements of monotonous and flat intonation in young Danish people with a schizophrenia diagnosis. A pilot study

Abstract

Purpose

Patients with schizophrenia have a flat and monotonous intonation. The purpose of the study was to find the variables of flat speech that differed in patients from those in healthy controls in Danish.

Materials and methods

We compared drug-naïve schizophrenic patients 5 men, 13 women and 18 controls, aged 18–35 years, which had all grown up in Copenhagen speaking modern Danish standard (rigsdansk). We used two different tasks that lay different demands on the speaker to elicit spontaneous speech: a retelling of a film clip and telling a story from pictures in a book. A linguist used the computer program Praat to extract the phonetic linguistic parameters.

Results

We found different results for the two elicitation tasks (Task 1: a retelling of a film clip, task 2: telling a story from pictures in a book). There was higher intensity variation in task one in controls and higher pitch variation in task two in controls. We found a difference in intensity with higher intensity variation in the stresses in the controls in task one and fewer syllables between each stress in the controls. We also found higher F1 variation in task one and two in the patient group and higher F2 variation in the control group in both tasks.

Conclusions

The results varied between patients and controls, but the demands also made a difference. Further research is needed to elucidate the possibilities of acoustic measures in diagnostics or linguistic treatment related to schizophrenia.

Keywords:

• Schizophrenia
• prosody
• acoustics
• flat speech

Acknowledgment

No funding received.

Ethical approval

The study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the National Committee on Health Research Ethics and approved by the Regional Committee on Research Ethics All information has been kept confidential, stored surely and in accordance with the regulations. Anonymity was retained by allocating a unique number for trial according to the regulations of the Danish Data Protection Agency.

Notes on contributors

Lene M. Jørgensen is a linquist and Ph.D. She has been involwed in teaching and research at Copenhagen University. Has published about immigrants ways to learn Danish phonetics. She is also involwed in Faroese dialects and language problems among people with schizophrenia.

Hannah Plato Jørgensen is a doctor and psychiatrist. She has been engaged in treatment of patients with schizophrenia and research about their social problems and communication.

Camilla Thranegaard is a Psychologist. She is engaged in therapeutic work and recovery among patients with schizophrenia and in research about social abilities for patients with schizophrenia.

August G. Wang is a psychiatrist and DMSc at Copenhagen University Hospital and University of Faroe Islands. He has been engaged in research in suicidology, genetics and recovery of psychiatric patients especially in communication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.