Due to the deficits of schizophrenic patients regarding the understanding of vague meanings (D. Ketteler and S. Ketteler (2010)) we develop a special test battery called HOLF (high order linguistic function test), which should be able to detect subtle linguistic performance deficits in schizophrenic patients. HOLF was presented to 40 schizophrenic patients and controls, focussing on linguistic features such as ambiguity, synonymy, hypero-/hyponymy, antinomy, and adages. Using the HOLF test battery we found that schizophrenic patients showed significant difficulties in discriminating ambiguities, hypero- and hyponymy, or synonymy compared to healthy controls. Antonyms and adages showed less significant results in comparing both groups. The more difficult a linguistic task was, the more confusion was measured in the schizophrenic group while healthy controls did not show significant problems in processing high order language tasks. 1. Introduction Regarding the history of diagnostic classification of schizophrenia, diagnostic tools and catalogues focussed on different symptoms to describe a complex syndrome called schizophrenia. On the one hand, Bleuler [1] had concentrated on the phenomenon of loosening of association to classify and explain schizophrenian symptoms. According to Bleuler, language-based “loosening of association” is pathognomonic for the so-called “schizophrenic symptoms complex.” On the other hand, Schneider [2] drew attention to the significance of “core” or “first rank” symptoms first outlined by Kraepelin (specific types of hallucination and thought disorder [3]). To overcome the at least obscure relationship between thought and association disorder of Bleuler’s approach, Andreasen [4, 5] shifted the focus of investigation from “thought” to the more objectively measurable “language behaviour.” Language impairment indeed seems to be one of the “core” phenomenological characteristics of patients with schizophrenia [6, 7]. It seems to be clear that there are deficits in the neural organisation of language in schizophrenic patients [6, 8]. There is only a small number of studies focussing on high order linguistic features and particularly on the phenomenon of ambiguity. Salisbury et al. [9] described a model of initial hyperpriming and subsequent decay of information by using ERP data investigating patients with schizophrenia. Using event related brain potentials and an ambiguity processing paradigm, Salisbury [10] found that schizophrenia patients showed the largest N400 effect to subordinate associates, with less activity to dominant
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