SCHIZOPHRENIC THINKING AS MEASURED BY DEVELOPMENTAL TESTS

Schizophrenics and alcoholic controls, in two separate experiments, were tested on two tasks, originally created to study the cognitive development of children. It was hypothesized that the schizophrenics would differ from alcoholic controls on these tasks in the same way as children have been reported to differ from adults, i.e., that schizophrenic thinking would be revealed as concrete and formally regressive. In general, this hypothesis was confirmed. Schizophrenics were less able than alcoholics to use “superordinate” and “nominal” groupings and less able to transpose a 3 by 3 matrix of cylinders. Further analysis revealed that the differences between schizophrenics and controls were due mainly to the poor conceptual performance of the nonparanoid schizophrenics and that success on matrix transposition was related to Ss' descriptions of the ordering principles of the matrix. It was suggested that there is a distinction between nonparanoid and paranoid thinking in terms of structural, or formal, vs. contentual disturbance.