Am J Psychiatry 1997; 154:858-860
Copyright © 1997 by American Psychiatric Association
Unnatural practices, unspeakable actions: a study of delayed auditory feedback in schizophrenia
TE Goldberg, JM Gold, R Coppola and DR Weinberger
Clinical Brain Disorders Branch, NIMH, Washington, DC, USA.
OBJECTIVE: It has been suggested that auditory hallucinations and delusions
of control in persons with schizophrenia could involve a disconnection
between an "intention center" and a "monitoring center." METHOD: To test
this model directly, the authors used a delayed auditory feedback paradigm
in which the subject hears his or her own speech delayed electronically by
a fraction of a second. In normal, subjects this produces dysfluency, which
is thought to occur because an expectancy about the perceptual arrival of
speech, formed in a monitoring center on the basis of corollary discharge
from an intention center, is violated. If, however, a disconnection were
present in schizophrenia, such an expectancy would not be formed; hence,
less dysfluency should occur. Fifteen patients with chronic schizophrenia
(10 of whom experienced auditory hallucinations and/or delusions of
control) and 19 normal subjects were studied. RESULTS: Rather than
exhibiting less dysfluency than the normal subjects, patients with
delusions and/or hallucinations exhibited significantly more dysfluency.
CONCLUSIONS: These results do not support a cognitive model of
disconnection.
