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This is the abstract for a poster presentation at the 2022 OHBM conference (https://www.humanbrainmapping.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=4114). The poster will be published here after the conference.

ACCEPTED ABSTRACT: Introduction: Studies consistently report that patients with schizophrenia exhibit qualitative abnormalities on language production tasks. These abnormalities are possibly associated with the severity of psychotic symptoms. Despite this, some studies have conflictingly suggested that patients with schizophrenia exhibit similar word frequency (WF) effects on lexical tasks compared to healthy subjects. Given that previous studies calculated WFs from language corpora, we aimed to investigate the relationship between WF and psychotic symptoms using a novel, simple method for calculating WF. Methods: Thirty-six patients with schizophrenia were included in the study. The severity of positive symptoms was measured using the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS). One semantic and one letter fluency task were administered with the patients instructed to produce as many animal anmes and words beginning with the letter p in 60 s, respectively. Every response in the output was assigned (1) a corpus-based WF, extracted from the German-language lexical database dlexDB, and (2) a within-sample WF. The within-sample WF was calculated as the raw number of participants who produced the word. Spearman���s correlations were computed between the WF variables and symptoms. Results: Corpus-based WF exhibited skewed, kurtic, and/or non-normal distribution. Contrastingly, within-sample WF displayed normal, non-skewed, and non-kurtic distribution. There were no significant correlations between corpus-based WF and symptoms on both tasks. Conversely, within-sample WF on semantic fluency was significantly negatively and weakly correlated with the global SAPS score, as well as subscales measuring delusions and bizarre behavior. Further, within-sample WF on letter fluency was significantly positively and weakly correlated with the subscale measuring bizarre behavior of the SAPS scale. Conclusion: The differences in the data distribution patterns between corpus-based WF and within-sample WF indicate that different methodological frameworks may have better use of one or the other variable type. Further, significant correlations with positive symptoms were observed only for within-sample WF. It can be concluded that within-sample WF may be more appropriate for analyzing verbal fluency output in psychiatric research compared to corpus-based WF., Pre-recorded presentation video: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5619891 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Preprint: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7tndz, {"references": ["Allen, H.A., Liddle, P.F., Frith, C.D., 1993. Negative features, retrieval processes and verbal fluency in schizophrenia. Br. J. 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In an increasingly networked world, people who cannot participate in written communication are particularly at risk of social exclusion. Like other concepts of barrier-free communication, Easy Language (“Leichte Sprache”) attempts to enhance perceptibility and comprehensibility of texts for people with reading impairments by means of a rule-based reduction of complexity on the text side. The underlying assumption of simplified languages is that the reduction of linguistic complexity correspondingly reduces cognitive processing costs. However, this interplay between linguistic complexity and cognitive processing costs still needs to be investigated by empirical research as up to date there are only a few studies investigating the perception and reception of Easy Language, mostly using offline methods (e.g., questionnaires or retrospective interviews). In contrast to offline methods, which are only capable of assessing comprehension products, online methods allow researchers to track what a participant is focusing their attention on at any given time and to thereby develop a detailed representation of the time-course of cognitive language processing. In our paper, we aim to point out how different online methods (eye-tracking, EEG and fMRI) can be used for investigating the empirical validity of the postulated rules for Easy Language by evaluating cognitive processing efficiency. Besides discussing the applicability of those neuroscientific online methods in Easy Language research, we discuss the importance of collecting personal and neuropsychological data to gain detailed profiles of the participants and therefore not only contribute to the explanation of variance but furthermore to determine the role of neuropsychological skills on reading proficiency. For each online method we elaborate basic principles, discuss some of the main findings in cognitive sciences and demonstrate the greatest advantages but also restrictions of the method and challenges related to the data collection process with impaired participants. Furthermore, we outline current challenges in Easy Language research and summarize remaining research gaps. On a final note, we emphasize that it is both the establishment of online methods and the data triangulation in Easy Language research that enable researchers to gain a profound insight into the cognitive processing of simplified languages.

Previous research on word frequency during speech production in schizophrenia is scant and inconclusive. Furthermore, there may exist methodological difficulties in utilizing corpus-based word frequencies, while adequate corpora are not available for all languages. We calculated (1) corpus-based and (2) within-sample word frequencies of output on verbal fluency in 36 patients with schizophrenia and tested their associations with positive and negative symptoms. Within-sample word frequency was calculated as the number of subjects in the sample who produced the word. Within-sample but not corpus-based word frequencies displayed normal, non-skewed, and non-kurtic data distributions. Within-sample but not corpus-based word frequencies were significantly correlated with the severity of delusions and bizarre behavior. We propose that the within-sample word frequency might be a valuable alternative to corpus-based word frequencies in clinical research.

ACCEPTED ABSTRACT: Background Despite verbal fluency (VF) being a common task in psychiatric research, there is very little consensus on the nature of VF deficits in psychiatric populations and their implications for our knowledge about cognitive and specifically linguistic functioning in these populations. Previous studies have found that negative symptoms, including alogia, are associated with poorer overall VF production in patients with schizophrenia (SCH), while studies investigating positive symptoms, including formal thought disorder, have yielded mixed results. Because most studies didn’t analyze additional VF measures such as clustering and lexical characteristics, it remains unclear whether the association between negative and positive symptoms and VF performance in patients with schizophrenia reflects abnormalities in linguistic and/or semantic processing or other aspects of cognition. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether these associations are specific to patients with schizophrenia, while the associations with manic and depressive symptoms are understudied. MethodsWe recruited 58 German-speaking inpatients diagnosed with either schizophrenia (N = 36), bipolar disorder (BD; N = 10), or major depression (DEP; N = 12). All patients were assessed on conventional symptom scales including the SANS/SAPS, HAMD, and YMRS, and were further administered the semantic (SF; animals) and letter (LF; P) fluency tasks (60 s). The following dependent variables were analyzed: correct words, error rate, response latencies, switching rate, cluster size, idiosyncratic word production rate, and word frequency. ResultsBD produced significantly larger clusters and had significantly higher idiosyncratic word production rates on SF compared to both SCH and DEP, while overall word frequency on SF differentiated between all patient groups. Overall negative symptomatology and specifically alogia were negatively associated with overall performance and positively with between-cluster response latencies on SF. Alogia was not significantly associated with other VF variables. Cluster size and overall word frequency on SF were positively associated with depressive and negatively with manic symptoms, idiosyncratic word production rate on SF was positively associated with manic symptoms, while positive symptoms were only negatively associated with the frequency of the firstthree words on SF. DiscussionPrevious evidence for an association between negative and positive symptoms, and VF performance in SCH has been to some extent replicated in a diverse psychiatric sample. Because alogia was not significantly associated with VF variables other than overall productivity and between-cluster response latencies, we found no evidence that alogia is associated with deficient processing within the semantic memory or mental lexicon. Yet, its positive association with between-cluster response latencies possibly suggests that alogia reflects transdiagnostic dysfunctional connectivity between the prefrontal and temporal cortices and, thus, inefficient lexical access. Furthermore, clinical levels of mania were associated with normal cluster sizes, in line with one previous study. Intriguingly, cluster sizes did not differ between SCH and DEP, indicating a similar level of the semantic deficit with possibly different underlying mechanisms. Additionally, manic symptoms were associated with relatively unusual (but appropriate) word production, indicating aberrant saliency of words during lexical access in mania. Further research regarding word frequency is needed to adequately interpret those results. Finally, LF performance was diagnostically and symptomatically unremarkable.