Prosodic and lexical entrainment in adults with and without schizophrenia

Abstract

Entrainment refers to the tendency people have to speak more similarly during a conversation. Although entrainment has been observed frequently, the underlying mechanisms of the phe-nomenon are debated. A specific point of disagreement is the role of social or higher-order cognitive factors in entrainment. The present study aimed to explore prosodic and lexical entrainment in small groups of individuals with schizophrenia, a dis-order that has been associated with theory of mind impairments and social difficulties, and a control group without schizophrenia. All participants completed a referential communication task with an experimenter. To determine prosodic entrainment, the measures proposed by Levitan and Hirshberg [1] were used. Results seem to suggest that the effect of task role on prosodic entrainment was larger than any possible effects of group, suggesting that social factors affect prosodic entrainment behaviour more than individual differences in cognition or other factors. Conversely, lexical entrainment was not affected by task role or group. Importantly, no clear patterns in entrainment on different dimensions, levels, or features could be observed, highlighting the complex and multifaceted nature of entrainment.