| active phase | The second stage of schizophrenia, during which the patient begins showing prominent psychotic symptoms.
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| anhedonia | A mood abnormality among schizophrenics in which the person's experience of pleasure is reduced. Often experienced by people during major depressive episodes, the inability to enjoy accustomed activities leads to a lack of interest in those activities.
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| antipsychotic drugs | Drugs used to relieve symptoms such as confusion, withdrawal, hallucinations, and delusions in psychotic patients. Also called major tranquilizers or neuroleptics.
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| behavioral high-risk design | A research design in which high-risk subjects are selected on the basis of behavioral traits thought to be associated with the disorder in question.
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| blunted affect | A mood abnormality among schizophrenics in which the person shows little emotion.
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| catatonic schizophrenia | A form of schizophrenia characterized by a marked disturbance in motor behavior: decreases in motion, complete immobility, cessation of speech, or alternating periods of immobility and extreme agitation.
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| catatonic stupor | An extreme form of withdrawal in which the individual retreats into a completely immobile state, showing a total lack of responsiveness to stimulation.
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| clanging | In schizophrenia, the pairing of words that have no relation to one another beyond the fact that they rhyme or sound alike.
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| communication deviance (CD) | A measurement of parental deviant or idiosyncratic verbal responses; used to predict the potential for their children's future schizophrenic behaviors.
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| deficit symptoms | Negative symptoms of schizophrenia that are primary and endure across the prodromal, active, and residual phases.
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| delusional disorder | A psychosis in which the delusional system is the basic or even the only abnormality, and in all other respects the person seems quite normal.
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| delusions | False beliefs that have no basis in reality.
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| dementia praecox | A syndrome identified by Kraepelin and marked by delusions, hallucinations, attention problems, and bizarre motor behavior. Now called schizophrenia.
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| diathesis-stress model | The belief that certain genes or gene combinations may lead to a diathesis, or predisposition, toward a disorder and that, if this is combined with certain kinds of environmental stress, abnormal behavior will result. In schizophrenia research, this approach holds that a predisposition to schizophrenia is inherited but that the disorder must be triggered by environmental stresses.
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| differential deficits | Deficits that are specific to the disorder in question (as opposed to other disorders) and that are presumably central to it.
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| disorganized schizophrenia | A form of schizophrenia characterized by pronounced incoherence of speech, childlike disturbed affect such as giggling wildly and assuming absurd postures, and disorganized behavior, or lack of goal orientation. Also called hebephrenic schizophrenia.
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| dopamine hypothesis | The theory that schizophrenia is associated with excess activity of the parts of the brain that use dopamine as a neurotransmitter.
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| echolalia | A speech deficit, characteristic of autistic children and some catatonic schizophrenics, in which the child aimlessly repeats what other people say.
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| expressed emotion (EE) | A measurement of key relatives' level of criticism and emotional overinvolvement, used in determining the family type of a hospitalized schizophrenic.
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| flat affect | A mood abnormality among schizophrenics in which the person shows no emotion.
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| genetic high-risk design | A research design in which high-risk subjects are selected on the basis of genetic factors associated with the disorder in question.
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| good-poor premorbid dimension | A dimension describing a patient's adaptive functioning prior to the onset of a disorder.
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| hallucinations | Sensory perceptions that occur in the absence of any appropriate external stimulus.
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| inappropriate affect | A mood abnormality among schizophrenics in which the person's emotional responses seem unsuitable to the situation.
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| loosening of associations | The rambling, disjointed quality that is characteristic of schizophrenic speech.
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| negative symptoms | In schizophrenia, the absence of something that is normally present; poverty of speech, flat affect, withdrawal, apathy, and attentional impairment.
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| neologisms | Words and phrases used in schizophrenic speech, but not found in dictionaries, sometimes formed by combining parts of two or more regular words.
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| paranoid-nonparanoid dimension | The classification of schizophrenics according to the presence (paranoid) or absence (nonparanoid) of delusions of persecution and/or grandeur.
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| paranoid schizophrenia | A form of schizophrenia characterized by consistent delusions and/or hallucinations, often related to themes of persecution and grandeur.
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| phenothiazines | A group of antipsychotic drugs that relieve symptoms such as confusion, withdrawal, hallucinations, and delusions.
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| positive-negative symptoms dimension | A dimension describing a schizophrenic patient's symptoms. Cf.negative symptoms; positive symptoms.
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| positive symptoms | In schizophrenia, the presence of something that is normally absent, including hallucinations, delusions, bizarre behavior, and incoherent thought patterns.
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| poverty of content | A characteristic of schizophrenic speech in which words are used correctly but communication is poor.
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| process-reactive dimension | The classification of people with schizophrenia according to whether the onset of symptoms is gradual (process) or abrupt and precipitated by a traumatic event (reactive).
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| prodromal phase | The initial stage of schizophrenia, during which the person generally becomes withdrawn and socially isolated.
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| psychoses | See psychosis.
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| residual phase | The third phase of schizophrenia, during which behavior is similar to that seen during the prodromal phase.
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| schizoaffective disorder | Diagnosis made when an individual has a manic or major depressive episode while at the same time exhibiting the symptoms of schizophrenia.
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| schizophrenia | A group of psychoses marked by severe distortion of thought, perception, and mood; by bizarre behavior; and by social withdrawal.
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| social-skills training | A behavioral therapy that teaches depressed or schizophrenic people basic techniques for engaging in satisfying interactions with others.
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| stereotypy | The act of engaging in purposeless behaviors repetitively for hours, sometimes manifested by schizophrenics.
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| tardive dyskinesia | A muscle disorder that causes uncontrollable grimacing and lip smacking; caused by antipsychotic drugs.
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| token economy | A behavior modification procedure, based on operant-conditioning principles, in which patients are given a conditioned reinforcer such as tokens for performing target behaviors. The patients can exchange the tokens for backup reinforcers such as snacks or special privileges.
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| Type I schizophrenia | A dimension of schizophrenia characterized by positive symptoms.
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| Type II schizophrenia | A dimension of schizophrenia characterized by negative symptoms.
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| word salad | A schizophrenic speech pattern in which words and phrases are combined in a disorganized fashion, seemingly devoid of logic, meaning, and even associational links.
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