A cognitive/linguistic model of single-word production abnormalities in schizophrenia: Data from two case reports

Recent empirical studies of single-word production in schizophrenia have moved away from a ''thought disorder''-based explanation and concluded that naming failures reflect a general cognitive deficit or executive dysfunction. Both explanations, however, beg the question about what happens linguistically during single-word production failure. Two schizophrenia-spectrum cases with single-word production abnormalities are reported and a cognitive/linguistic explanation for a subset of their deficits is offered. Both patients were severely impaired on the Boston Naming Test, producing a substantial number of responses indicative of both phonemic and semantic processing breakdown. Goodglass' (1993) ''interactive'' model of single-word retrieval is used to explain these responses and an integration of this model with the executive function and attention deficits of schizophrenia is proposed.