What is linguistics creativity in schizophrenia?

Abstract Background In an experiment in which clinicians were asked to identify formal thought disorder (FTD) in schizophrenia based on writing samples, the mania and creative writing samples received more FTD diagnoses than the FTD samples. We conducted a systematic review to see whether figuration, associated with both schizophrenia and creative uses of language, could contextualise these findings. Methods This was a systematic review only PROSPERO (ID:116255). We searched AMED, Child Development and Adolescent Studies, CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycARTICLES, and PsycINFO. Results Many studies used figuration tasks to test creativity and vice versa, and key factors affecting figurative language output and processing were positive and negative symptom ratios, IQ, and schizophrenia subtype. Discussion/Conclusion Our review suggests that the clinicians in the experiment mentioned above perceived FTD as characterised by linguistic markers of verbal and figural creativity that are impacted by FTD itself. FTD is more likely characterised by expressional disfluencies in specific contexts