Pauses in people diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia and first episode [las pausas en el discurso de personas con diagnóstico de esquizofrenia crónica y de primer episodio]

Paraverbal resources constitute a complex system in which various phonetic phenomena are used to contribute to the understanding of what has been said among the speakers, transmitting key information of an emotional, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and dialectological nature. The effective use of these resources produces a permanent cognitive demand in the communicative exchange and a psychiatric pathology -such as schizophrenia- diminishes the possibilities of an adequate performance. Thus, the aim was to evaluate 72 speech samples from people diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia and first episode, in order to compare the characteristics of the pauses they use in the context of communicative interaction. The hypothesis is that the pauses of people with schizophrenia are dysfunctional since they do not contribute to optimize the communicative exchange. The results indicate that there are indeed dysfunctions when performing pauses in both stages of the disease, since they do not fulfill a communicative function.