The maturation of speech structure in psychosis is resistant to formal education

Autor(es)

Mota, Natalia Bezerra ^{[1, 2]} ; Sigman, Mariano ^{[3, 4, 5]} ; Cecchi, Guillermo ^[6] ; Copelli, Mauro ^[1] ; Ribeiro, Sidarta ^[2]

Afiliação do(s) autor(es)

^[1] Univ Fed Pernambuco, Dept Fis, Recife, PE - Brazil

^[2] Univ Fed Rio Grande do Norte, Inst Cerebro, Natal, RN - Brazil

^[3] Consejo Nacl Invest Cient & Tecn, Buenos Aires, DF - Argentina

^[4] Univ Torcuato Di Tella, Lab Neurociencia, Buenos Aires, DF - Argentina

^[5] Univ Nebrija, Fac Lenguas & Educ, Madrid - Spain

^[6] IBM TJ Watson Res Ctr, Computat Biol Ctr, Neurosci, Yorktown Hts, NY - USA

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: NPJ SCHIZOPHRENIA; v. 4, DEC 7 2018.
• Citações Web of Science: 2

Resumo

Discourse varies widely with age, level of education, and psychiatric state. Word graphs have been recently shown to provide behavioral markers of formal thought disorders in psychosis (e.g., disorganized flow of ideas) and to track literacy acquisition in children with typical development. Here we report that a graph-theoretical computational analysis of verbal reports from subjects spanning 6 decades of age and 2 decades of education reveals asymptotic changes over time that depend more on education than age. In typical subjects, short-range recurrence and lexical diversity stabilize after elementary school, whereas graph size and long-range recurrence only steady after high school. Short-range recurrence decreases towards random levels, while lexical diversity, long-range recurrence, and graph size increase away from near-randomness towards a plateau in educated adults. Subjects with psychosis do not show similar dynamics, presenting at adulthood a children-like discourse structure. Typical subjects increase the range of word recurrence over school years, but the same feature in subjects with psychosis resists education. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 13/07699-0 - Centro de Pesquisa, Inovação e Difusão em Neuromatemática - NeuroMat
• Beneficiário: Oswaldo Baffa Filho
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Centros de Pesquisa, Inovação e Difusão - CEPIDs