Negative symptoms can be thought of as those symptoms that are a deficit to what others without schizophrenia might experience. Negative symptoms include decreased thought and speech productivity (alogia), loss of ability to experience pleasure (anhedonia), decreased initiation of goal-directed behavior (avolition), and speech with little or no change to their tone, little or no change in their facial expression, even if they are talking about something upsetting or exciting (affective flattening). The person may have trouble starting tasks or sustaining activities over a period of time.
Disorganized symptoms include disorganized speech (frequent derailment and incoherence), and disorganized behavior and attention. For example, the person may have trouble organizing their thoughts or behaviors. Conversations with them might be hard to follow because they jump from one topic to another, sentences do not seem to follow from the one before, words may be made-up or strung together in a way that does not make sense. Additionally, the person may behave in ways that others view as bizarre or without purpose.