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Verbal symbols to designate objects: An experimental study of communication in mothers of schizophrenic children

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Abstract

A study of referential communication of mothers of schizophrenic children based on the Krauss-Glucksberg experiments is presented in detail. The effectiveness with which each mother labelled or described particular objects in order to assist her child to discriminate them from other objects was appraised. Duly assayed were three aspects of the mother's message: mutuality (her responsiveness to the child's requests for help), content (the level of information in the mother's message), and style. The experimental children, 10 boys and 2 girls, were selected to represent the most capable ones in a larger population of young schizophrenic patients. All, about 9 years of age, had normal vocabulary levels. The study included a control group of normal children matched for age, sex, and social class. In contrast to mothers of normal children, those of the schizophrenic were inferior in all three aspects of communication assayed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Henry Ittleson Center for Child Research, 5050 Iselin Avenue, 10471, Riverdale, New York

    William Goldfarb (Director), Elaine Yudkovitz & Nathan Goldfarb

Authors
  1. William Goldfarb
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  2. Elaine Yudkovitz
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  3. Nathan Goldfarb
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Additional information

This paper constitutes a part of the Childhood Schizophrenia Project of the Henry Ittleson Center for Child Research under support of the Ittleson Family Foundation and NIMH Grant No. MH05753-12.

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Goldfarb, W., Yudkovitz, E. & Goldfarb, N. Verbal symbols to designate objects: An experimental study of communication in mothers of schizophrenic children. J Autism Dev Disord 3, 281–298 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01538538

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