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Abstract: Some studies have found that the speech of certain schizophrenia patients becomes more disordered in stressful laboratory situations. It is unknown, however, whether affective reactivity of speech is associated with stress responsiveness of symptoms in the real world. This study examines whether language-reactive patients report more stress-related impairments in work functioning than language-nonreactive patients. Forty-six patients provided speech samples and completed a work history interview. It was found that the language-reactive patients were more likely than the language-nonreactive patients to endorse items pertaining to social anxiety and difficulty relating to others as reasons for their work difficulties. This suggests that language-reactive patients are more sensitive to social stressors than language-nonreactive patients. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: This report presents a French translation and validation of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) in a population of women exposed to a natural disaster during or preceding pregnancy.Method: A total of 223 francophone women who were either pregnant at the time of the 1998 ice storm or who became pregnant shortly thereafter completed the IES-R and other questionnaires 6 months after the disaster.Results: The French IES-R has good internal consistency, with alpha coefficients ranging from 0.81 to 0.93 for its 3 subscales and total score. The test-retest reliability of the scale, although examined with another sample, proved to be satisfactory, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.71 to 0.76 for its 3 subscales and total score. Its convergent validity with perceived life threat and general psychiatric symptoms was judged to be marginally acceptable. Finally, a principal components analysis was conducted and a 3-factor solution, which explained 56% of the variance, was retained: a hyperarousal factor (7 items), an avoidance factor (6 items), and an intrusion factor (6 items).Conclusions: The French version of the IES-R has satisfactory internal validity and test-retest reliability. Further, the factor structure of the translation was similar to the proposed theoretical structure of the IES-R. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]