Overinclusive thinking in process and reactive schizophrenics: Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by Thomas S. Eliseo (Journal of Consulting Psychology, 27[5] 1963, 447-449). The quotation from column one, paragraph two on page 448, "the median, 25... higher" should read as follows, "the median, 25, was selected as the separation point for Re (scores of 24 or less) and Pr (scores of 26 or higher)." (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1964-04599-001.) Previous research has indicated that schizophrenics show more overinclusive thinking (i.e., failure to exclude behavior unrelated to a task) than do "normals." 17 reactive schizophrenics, 29 process schizophrenics, and 21 chronic general medical-surgical patients, equivalent in vocabulary knowledge and education, were compared on the Epstein Inclusion Test. Contrary to the prediction that the process schizophrenics would commit more errors, no significant differences were found between the groups. It is possible that overinclusion is a characteristic of depression or chronic illness in general, rather than specific to the schizophrenic disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Overinclusive thinking in acute schizophrenic patients.

Investigated 2 types of overinclusive thinking, behavioral and conceptual, in 110 acute psychiatric inpatients. The Object Sorting Test was administered and scored for the 2 types of overinclusion and for idiosyncratic (bizarre) thinking and rich associations. Results on behavioral overinclusion and rich associations were mixed. Behavioral overinclusion was more frequent in schizophrenics, but was also found in many acute nonschizophrenics. Conceptual overinclusion and idiosyncratic thinking were significantly more frequent among acute schizophrenics and were also found in delusional patients regardless of diagnosis. (41 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hypnotic susceptibility of schizophrenic patients.

Clinical lore and much of the previous literature has maintained that schizophrenics are far less susceptible to hypnosis than are normals. A few studies have reported success with hypnotizing schizophrenics, but have lacked a methodology which would permit comparison with normal Ss to be made. In this study, 26 Ss with a hospital diagnosis of schizophrenia were given the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale—a verbatim induction technique and rating scale for which data on a normal, standardization group is available. The Ss gave results much like the normal group. Reasons for the difference between this and previous findings are discussed, including the hypothesis that previous workers found schizophrenics to be different in hypnotizability from normals because they treated them differently than they would normals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reaction time, distractibility, and overinclusive thinking in psychotics.

Fifteen paranoid schizophrenics, 15 nonparanoid schizophrenics, and 15 nonschizophrenic psychiatric inpatients were given 3 of Babcock's tests of psychomotor retardation, and a test of overinclusive thinking based on Benjamin's proverbs. In addition, they took part in a simple and multiple-choice auditory reactiontime experiment in which the presence and number of distracting stimuli were varied. As predicted, the reaction times of the overinclusive patients were initially significantly slower. Overinclusive patients were also significantly more affected by the distraction, presumably because they are less able to filter out these irrelevant stimuli. A similar performance characterized those diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, as contrasted to those with other diagnoses, probably because of the significant relationship between paranoia and overinclusive thinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship of interpersonal involvement and affectiveness of content to the verbal communication of schizophrenic patients.

To analyze the effect of close interpersonal contact on the communication process of schizophrenics, 30 hospitalized male schizophrenics were asked to associate to TAT-like cards under 2 conditions of E-involvement. The condition of close personal contact was where E interviewed S directly, made use of personal pronouns, and at-attempted to promote a relatively close relationship; the condition of remote personal contact was where S received nonpersonalized instructions from a tape recorder operated by E. As compared to 30 hospitalized medical patients, content of speech of the schizophrenic patients was indistinguishable from controls except for irrelevancies. Degree of personal contact did not seem to affect S's communication. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Shape constancy in schizophrenic patients.

Shape constancy in visual perception of schizophrenic patients was studied. 40 chronic schizophrenic, 40 acute schizophrenic, 40 nonschizophrenic mental patients, and 40 normal controls were used as Ss. Ss matched the shape of a standard object (circle) inclined at an angle. 2 angles of inclination, 30° and 60°, were used. It was found that shape constancy was lower in schizophrenic patients than in controls when the stimulus object was inclined 60° from the horizontal plane. When the angle of inclination was 30° there was no difference between the groups. The chronic schizophrenic patients displayed greater response variability than the other groups. The relation of these findings to the theory of assimilation of percepts to the perceptual schemata in schizophrenic patients was discussed. (23 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experimental manipulation of continuous speech in schizophrenic patients.

A method was developed for obtaining extended continuous speech samples from hospitalized schizophrenics. 1 group was reinforced for self-referred affect statements, 1 group for speech in general, and 1 group served as a no-reinforcement control. The effect of reinforcement proved specific to the response class reinforced, whether narrow (self-referred affect statements) or more general (total speech output). The conditioning process progresses from broad classes to the particular one on which reinforcement is contingent. The problem of respons-class identification and other implications of the findings are discussed. (36 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Patterns of role dominance and conflict in parents of schizophrenic patients.

By making observations of husband-wife interaction in an experimental setting, ratings of dominance of one parent over the other and degree of conflict could be obtained directly rather than inferred. Such ratings could be compared to data regarding the status of their children. Schizophrenic children with good and poor premorbid adjustment were compared with a comparable group of children hospitalized for tuberculosis. Good premorbids and controls were found to be from paternal-dominated families whereas poor premorbids came from maternal-dominated families. Parents of schizophrenics displayed more conflicts than those of the controls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety and ego strength as predictors of response in schizophrenic patients.

Hypotheses, derived from existing psychological formulations of schizophrenia, that degree of manifest anxiety and ego strength would be positively related to response to treatment were examined in a sample of 50 male and 50 female first admission schizophrenics. Scales (Baron, 1953a; Taylor, 1953) purported to assess these variables did not predict treatment outcome for the combined groups. However, in analyses broken down by sex both predictors were significantly related to outcome criteria, but in consistently opposite directions for men and women. The markedly different results for men and women are interpreted in terms of the sex-role appropriateness of the behavior sampled by the predictor measures. (27 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intralist similarity and verbal rote learning performance of schizophrenic and cortically damaged patients.

The hypotheses tested were that with increasing intralist similarity in the material to be learned schizophrenics would show more difficulty and cortically damaged organics less difficulty than a normal control group. 3 equated groups of hospital patients representing each classification were used. Each group was further subdivided into thirds representing different degrees of intralist similarity of meaning. The hypothesis that cortically damaged organics would show a less pronounced rate of increase in difficulty than normals was confirmed, but the first hypothesis was not. 20 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of recent and remote frames of reference on temporal judgments of schizophrenic patients.

"46 schizophrenic patients were compared with 80 control Ss with respect to their estimation of one clock second's duration under long and short anchor conditions, where anchor represented the extreme duration in a series. In addition, the interaction of recent and more remote anchors was studied." The findings suggested that the schizophrenic is likely to overestimate the duration of a clock second and that they responded only to the pulling effect of immediate anchors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of thorazine on learning and retention in schizophrenic patients.

The effect of thorazine upon learning in schizophrenics was studied by the use of a word association task. The performance of patients receiving varying dosages of thorazine (from 100 to 800 mg/day) were compared with patients who were on placebo. Thorazine was seen to affect learning and retention negatively. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship of age and privilege status to reaction time indices of schizophrenic motivation.

An experiment designed to investigate the relationship of age and ground privilege status to reaction time indices of biological, social and anxiety motivation in schizophrenic patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A multidimensional content-analysis system applied to the analysis of therapeutic technique in psychotherapy with schizophrenic patients.

Describes a 5-dimensional content-analysis system for the study of naturally occurring spoken discourse about sociopsychological aspects of human life in use in a long-term, atheoretic study of psychotherapy. The ways in which decisions concerning research methodology are determined by the long-term, atheoretic character of the research are discussed. Empirical findings are presented concerning the reliability of the system's coding categories, the consistency of therapist verbal behavior as measured by the content-analysis system, and the sensitivity of the system to differences in therapeutic technique related to difference in theoretical orientation. The exploratory analysis to isolate a variable related to an aspect of therapeutic outcome is described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Postdiction of the outcome of somatic therapy from the Rorschach records of schizophrenic patients.

The Rorschach protocols of 60 schizophrenic patients previously hospitalized were presented to 3 psychologists with the instructions to differentiate the 30 patients who had improved from the 30 who had not. The 4 factors of Conflict, Control, Flexibility, and Strength of Drive were selected and defined by the investigators together with the psychologists. Each patient was rated on a 5-point scale with the content analysis approach used primarily. The accuracy of all 3 psychologists in differentiating between the 2 groups of patients on all 4 of the factors was found to be significant beyond the .01% level of confidence according to the chisquare values obtained. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A technique for the study of psychodynamic relationships: The effects of subliminally presented aggressive stimuli on the production of pathological thinking in a schizophrenic population.

An investigation of the effects of subliminally presented aggressive stimuli on thought processes. 32 hospitalized male schizophrenics were seen for an experimental and control session in a balanced design. Inkblot responses elicited after the exposure of aggression-related and neutral stimuli were scored blindly according to the Holt Primary Process Manual. As predicted, there were significantly more manifestations of pathological thinking after the aggressive stimuli. It was concluded from this finding, together with other clinically significant changes after the experimental stimuli, that the technique described has general applicability for the study of psychodynamic relationships. (23 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A schizophrenic child and his mother.

The case of a five-year-old schizophrenic child is presented together with his background. "The mother's lack of psychological sophistication, her cooperative attitude, and the relative youth of the child permit a rather clear view of some of the dynamics which might have entered into the genesis of the disorder." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

GSR conditioning in anxiety states, normals, and chronic functional schizophrenic subjects.

"Conditioning of the GSR to electric shock in 60 hospitalized anxiety states, 60 normal controls, and 60 chronic functional schizophrenics yielded the following… [results]: With magnitude of response (in log conductance units) during experimental extinction as an indirect measure of strength of conditioning, and anxiety Ss showed significantly stronger conditioning than both the normal and schizophrenic Ss, the difference in response magnitude being some increasing function of the number of extinction trials, as shown by a significant interaction term." (28 ref.) From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:1HK83H. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The response of schizophrenic patients to a televised World Series game: A study in social isolation.

This study is an initial effort to demonstrate the social isolation of schizophrenic patients and to test certain hypotheses relating social isolation to chronicity and severity of illness. Using a standardized rating sheet, 8 clinical psychologists were stationed on wards of a large mental hospital to observe the responses of patients during a televised World Series baseball game. The results showed that on the whole the game drew an unusually small audience. There was a striking absence of social response in terms of interaction between patients or with the game. This study, thus, highlights the schizophrenic's immense alienation from social interchange. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some determinants of persistence in chronic schizophrenic subjects.

This investigation of persistence in schizophrenics on tasks differing in complexity and interest under ego-involved and task-oriented conditions utilized 3 groups of male schizophrenics: 30 well-adjusted and 30 poorly-adjusted out-patients, and 30 regressed hospitalized patients. Each S worked at 1 of 3 tasks representing low, moderate, and high degrees of interest and complexity. ? of each group received ego-involved and ? received task-oriented instructions. Outpatient schizozphrenics were clearly superior to hospitalized patients in persistence. Persistence was greater under ego-involved than under task-oriented conditions, regardless of task or level of psychopathology, but there was no difference in persistence scores across tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)