Communication Deviance, Thought Disorder, and Attention Dysfunction in Mothers of Children At Risk for Schizophrenia.

Abstract

Among the various methods for identifying children at high risk for the subsequent development of schizophrenia, three strategies are currently dominant: The definition of children at genetic risk because they are offspring of schizophrenic parents, the evaluation of developmental histories using the Risk Profile, and the presence of communication deviance in the projective test responses of parents. Unlike the other strategies, the theoretical assumptions of the parental communication deviance approach have not undergone systematic investigation. This study focused on three issues: (1) The extent to which mothers' communication deviance scores were related to measures of disordered thought, attentional difficulties, and a number of variables theoretically considered influential; (2) an investigation of differences in these measures among mothers whose children represent various levels of genetic and /or global risk; and (3) the determination of which of the three strategies for identifying risk is the best predictor for severity of psychopathology manifested by the children in the sample. One hundred mother-child pairs, divided into five conditions (N=20) participated in the study. The conditions included groups of mothers whose children were considered to be at: Genetic risk and high global risk as measured by the Risk Profile, genetic risk/low global risk, no genetic risk/high global risk, no genetic risk/low global risk, and no genetic risk/low global risk/community controls. The mothers were equivalent on a number of demographic variables. They were each administered the Thematic Apperception Test which was scored for communication deviance, the Object Sorting Test, a card sorting task, the Stroop Test, the attentional measures of the Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style, the Mental Health Questionnaire, the Schedule of Recent Experiences, and the Defensiveness subtest of the Autobiographical Survey. The children were evaluated on the Child Behavior Profile. The results indicated that: (1) Maternal communication deviance was related to measures of disordered thought, attentional difficulties, nonpsychotic symptomatology, and the magnitude of recent life events; (2) mothers whose children were at high global risk exhibited significantly greater impairment on all of the major variables under investigation--the genetic-no genetic risk dichotomy produced fewer significant differences; and (3) while all three strategies were associated with the severity of psychopathology manifested by the children, the estimates derived from the Risk Profile appeared to be the best predictors. The findings were discussed from the perspective of the communication deviance paradigm and the research on segmental set. Recommendations for future research were described.