LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13 : 1 January 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Do All Individuals with Schizophrenia Have Cluttering?

Mrs. Jessica Furtado, Masters of Speech Language Pathology
Gagan Bajaj, Masters of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology
Ms. Leeba Babu, Masters of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology

Abstract

Cluttering is a disability in formulating language, causing confused, hurried and slurred diction, due to congenital and constitutional limitation of one’s total psychosomatic personality structure. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder characterized by hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thoughts/speech, disorganized behavior and apathy. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and co-existence of Cluttering in patients with Schizophrenia. Twelve participants with a diagnosis of Schizophrenia were subjected to a series of linguistic and extralinguistic tasks. A writing sample was also obtained. The responses of all participants on these tasks, coupled with information from their medical charts, were used to complete the Daly’s Checklist. The study depicted that majority of the participants had Cluttering – Stuttering features, a significant proportion exhibited Cluttering and only one participant had no dysfluencies. This highlighted the co-existence of Cluttering and Schizophrenia, owing to its neurophysiological similarities. The linguistic impairments seen in patients with Schizophrenia constitute an independent ‘syndrome’ and cannot be attributed to their mental illness.

Keywords: Cluttering, Schizophrenia, Daly’s checklist, Stuttering

Introduction

Cluttering is defined as a speech disorder characterized by the individual’s unawareness of his disorder, by a short attention span, by disturbances in perception, articulation and formulation of speech and often by excessive speed of delivery (Weiss, 1964). It is a disorder of the thought processes preparatory to speech, based on a hereditary predisposition. Weiss (1964) describes cluttering as a Central Language Imbalance (CLI) which can be explained as unevenness and a lag in maturation. Some other attempts to explain the apparent ‘organicity’ of this CLI include sub-microscopic lesions in the striatum (Seeman, 1970), lack of maturation of the nervous system (de Hirsch, 1961) and a strong hereditary factor (Weiss, 1964; Luchsinger, 1965).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Mrs. Jessica Furtado, Masters of Speech Language Pathology
Lecturer, Department of Speech Language Pathology
Dr. S.R.C. Institute of Speech and Hearing
Bangalore - 560047
Karnataka
India
jmf14@rediffmail.com

Gagan Bajaj, Masters of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology
Assistant professor
Department of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology
Kasturba Medical College, Attavar
Unit of Manipal University
Mangalore - 575001
Karnataka
India
ggn1.bajaj@gmail.com

Ms. Leeba Babu, Masters of Audiology and Speech Language Pathology
Speech Language Pathologist and Audiologist
Dubai
leebababu87@gmail.com
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