Communication deviance

Communication deviance (CD) occurs when a speaker fails to effectively communicate meaning to their listener with confusing speech patterns or illogical patterns.[1] These disturbances can range from vague linguistic references, contradictory statements to more encompassing non-verbal problems at the level of turn-taking.

The term was originally introduced by Lyman Wynne and Margaret Singer in 1963 to describe a communication style found among parents who had children with schizophrenia.[2] According to Wynne, people are able to focus their attention and identify meaning from external stimuli beginning with their interactions, particularly with their parents, during their early years of life.[3] In family communication, deviance is present in the way members acknowledge or affirm one another as well as in task performance.[4]

A recent meta-analysis reported that communication deviance is highly prevalent in parents of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia [5] and adoption studies have reported significant associations between CD in the parent and thought disorder in the offspring,[6] however, the mechanisms by which CD impacts on the offspring's cognition are still unknown. Some researchers theorize that, in the case of a high degree of egocentric communication in parents where the sender and the receiver do not speak and listen according to each other's premises, the child develops uncertainty.[7]

The research of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts Lyman Wynne and Theodore Lidz on communication deviance and roles (e.g., pseudo-mutuality, pseudo-hostility, schism and skew) in families of people with schizophrenia also became influential with systems-communications-oriented theorists and therapists.[8][9]