The 25 patients were 23.8 ± 4.4 years of age and had completed 11.8 ± 1.9 years of education. English-speaking first-episode patients (without prior outpatient treatment for psychosis lasting > 3 months, or prior hospitalization for psychosis > 3 months before index hospitalization) aged 18–40 years were Results Both sites serve a predominantly African American, low-income, socially disadvantaged population. Because chronic antipsychotic exposure can induce “secondary” negative symptoms, a first-episode psychosis sample is particularly enlightening.ĭata were collected as part of a larger study based at inpatient psychiatric units at a large, public-sector, urban hospital and a crisis stabilization unit in a neighboring suburban county. We hypothesized that variability of F1 and F2 would be lower in patients with greater negative symptom severity. Their absolute values depend on the sound being made and the individual's physical characteristics, but what interested us was their variability. The first two formants, F1 and F2, roughly indicate tongue height/mouth opening and tongue front-to-back position. Formants allow humans to recognize many speech sounds, especially vowels. Many of the movements involved in producing speech can be measured phonetically through spectral decomposition of sound waves into formants (resonance bands produced by shape of the oral cavity). We conducted an analysis of deeper phonetic parameters (beyond rate and productivity), assessed with sound spectrography. Using his VOXCOM technology from the mid-1980s, Alpert et al., 1997, Alpert et al., 2000, Alpert et al., 2002 correlated negative symptoms with vocal/acoustic parameters such as pauses, slowed rate, and aprosody. Reduced facial muscle activity is also associated with schizophrenia (Schneider et al., 1990, Trémeau et al., 2005), and such facial bradykinesia likely contributes to altered speech quality (Cannizzarro et al., 2005). Flattened intonation or aprosody-speech that is soft, emotionless, and lacking normal variations in speed, tone, and emphasis-is a negative symptom of schizophrenia (Spoerri, 1966, Cutting, 1985, Alpert et al., 1989, Covington et al., 2005).
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