Deictic gestures impairment in individuals with at risk mental states for psychosis.

Abstract Background: Nonverbal communication (NVC) is a complex behavior that involves different modalities that are impaired in schizophrenia spectrum, including gesticulation. However, there are few studies that evaluate it in individuals with at-risk mental states (ARMS) for psychosis, mostly in developed countries. Given our prior findings of reduced movement during speech seen in Brazilian individuals with ARMS, we now aim to determine if this can be accounted for by reduced gesticulation behavior. Methods: 56 medication-naïve ARMS and 64 healthy controls were filmed during speech tasks. The frequency of specific coded gestures across four categories (and self-stimulatory behaviors) were compared between groups and tested for correlations with prodromal symptoms of the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes (SIPS) and with the variables previously published. Results: ARMS individuals showed a reduction in one gesture category.Gesture frequency was negatively correlated with prodromal symptoms and positively correlated with the variables of amount of movement previously analyzed. Conclusion: The reduction in gesture performance observed agrees with literature findings in other cultural contexts in ARMS and schizophrenia subjects. The lack of differences for other categories might be related to differences within the ARMS group itself and the course of the disorder. These findings show the importance of analyzing NVC in ARMS and of considering different cultural and sociodemographic contexts in the search for markers of these states.