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Biomedical subjects

D R Rutter

Publications and source records attributed to D R Rutter.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1978

Visual interaction in schizophrenic patients: the timing of looks.

Previous research has suggested that schizophrenic patients engage in very little Looking and eye-contact, at least in "personal" conversations. As yet, however, we know nothing about the precise timing of their Looks, even though this has important clinical implications. Data from three studies are presented and no evidence of abnormality is found. It is concluded that, taken together, findings from visual interaction suggest not that schizophrenic patients behave in a socially unskilled way as has sometimes been argued, but simply that they are embarassed by "personal" conversations and, like perfectly healthy people who are embarrassed, respond by averting the gaze.

Affect↗
PubMed1977

Visual interaction and speech patterning in remitted and acute schizophrenic patients.

Previous research has suggested that schizophrenic patients sometimes show abnormal patterns of visual interaction and speech. Several important questions remain, however, and the present study was designed for two purposes; to examine the behaviour of remitted patients; and to follow up a suggestion that acute patients show abnormalities only in personal encounters. Three groups of subjects, remitted schizophrenic patients, acute schizophrenic patients and a control group of psychiatrically normal chest patients, took part, and each subject held two conversations with a nurse, one about a 'personal' topic and one about a 'neutral' topic. Unexpectedly, the remitted and acute groups were both found to behave normally, in both conversations. Taken together with previous evidence, the findings thus confirmed that acute schizophrenic patients respond situation-specifically and sometimes behave normally, but no further interpretation of the data was possible since the manipulation of topic did not have the expected effects.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1977

Speech patterning in recently admitted and chronic long-stay schizophrenic patients.

Several writers have suggested that schizophrenic patients show unusual formal, or non-content, patterns of speech. For reasons of methodology, none of their findings is easy to interpret, and important questions remain unanswered. In particular, we do not know how schizophrenic patients behave in free conversion, how their behaviour with another patient may differ from their behaviour with a psychiatrically normal partner, whether they show consistency across encounters, nor whether patients recently admitted to hospital differ from chronic long-stay patients. The first study was designed to examine the first three questions, by observing recently admitted schizophrenic patients in two free dyadic conversations, one with a schizophrenic partner and one with a psychiatrically normal partner, and comparing them with three control groups; depressive patients; patients suffering from neurotic or personality disorders; and psychiatrically normal chest patients. Consistently across their two encounters, schizophrenic subjects were found to behave similarly for the most part to all three control groups. The second study went on to examine the fourth question, by comparing recently admitted and chronic long-stay schizophrenic patients, and revealed no differences between the two groups. The investigation is discussed in the light of previous research, and it is suggested that a critical variable may be the setting and nature of the encounter in which the schizophrenic patient takes part.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Thought disorder and the predictability of schizophrenic speech.

Previous research suggests that the predictability of speech in schizophrenic patients may be related to certain measures of thought disorder. Two uninterrupted passages of 200 words were taken from 25 randomly selected schizophrenic patients recently admitted to hospital and were 'Clozed' by students under both fourth- and fifth-word deletion. Thought disorder was measured by the Bannister-Fransella test, and the Cloze scores were found to be related neither to Intensity nor to Consistency.

Adult↗
PubMed1976

History-taking for medical students. I-Deficiencies in performance.

A videotape analysis of histories conducted by 50 senior medical students was carried out to assess their history-taking skills. As predicted, serious deficiencies (similar to those evident in inexperienced medical students) were found. It is argued that traditional methods of clinical training fail to equip medical students with adequate history-taking skills. They should be given a more appropriate history-taking scheme, the opportunity to practice this under conditions of direct observation within strict time-limits, and detailed feedback about their performance.

Education, Medical, Undergraduate↗
PubMed1976

History-taking for medical students. II-Evaluation of a training programme.

Two experiments designed to evaluate a programme for training medical students in history-taking skills were carried out. Results of the first indicate that students who underwent the programme reported almost three times as much relevant and accurate information after a test interview as those who received only traditional training. Results of the second experiment suggest that most of the programme's effect is attributable to discussion of a printed handout which presents the student with a detailed scheme for taking histories.

Education, Medical, Undergraduate↗
PubMed1976

Visual interaction in recently admitted and chronic long-stay schizophrenic patients.

Several reports have suggested that schizophrenic patients engage in very little Looking and eye-contact. However, previous work, much of it methodologically unsatisfactory, has been based almost always on the clinical psychiatric interview, with the result that several important questions remain unanswered. In particular, we do not know how schizophrenic patients behave in free conversation, how their behaviour with another patient may differ from their behaviour with a psychiatrically normal partner, nor even whether they show individual consistency across encounters. The first study was designed to examine these questions, by observing recently admitted schizophrenic patients in two free dyadic conversations, one with a schizophrenic partner and one with a psychiatrically normal partner, and comparing them with three control groups: depressive patients; patients suffering from neurotic or personality disorders; and psychiatrically normal chest patients. The second study went on to test whether the early descriptions of gross abnormality may be more appropriate to chronic long-stay patients than to recently admitted patients, and the design consisted of a comparison between the two groups. The first study revealed a quite unexpected pattern of results. Consistently across their two encounters, schizophrenic subjects behaved similarly for the most part to all three control groups, normal and abnormal alike. Moreover, the few differences which did emerge conflicted sharply with previous findings, including the writer's, and were no more marked in patient-patient than patient-normal encounters. The second study revealed no differences between chronic long-stay and recently admitted schizophrenic patients. It is suggested that the differences in findings between the present two studies and previous reports are most likely to be attributable to differences in verbal content: schizophrenic patients show abnormalities of visual interaction when talking about personal matters, but behave quite normally when the topic is not of immediate personal relevance.

Chronic Disease↗
PubMed1975

The prediction and predictability of speech in schizophrenic patients.

Previous research suggests, though by no means consistently, that schizophrenic patients may be less able than normals to predict the speech of other people, and that schizophrenic speech is less predictable than normal speech. The present experiment tests these two suggestions and also a third possibility, that the difference between schizophrenic and normal speech is less marked for schizophrenics asked to make the predictions than for normals. Twelve schizophrenic patients recently admitted to hospital, and twelve comparable, psychiatrically normal, orthopaedic patients, were asked to predict both schizophrenic and normal speech, using Cloze Procedure, under both fourth-word and fifth-word deletion. The first hypothesis was upheld, but the second and third received only very limited support. The findings are discussed in the light of previous work, and suggestions are made for future research.

Adolescent↗