The use of a physical symptom as a defense against psychosis.

It was hypothesized that, since anxiety is one of the main stress factors in producing psychotic symptoms, a psychotic's symptoms might decrease if his anxiety could be decreased. Using a single schizophrenic patient the authors attempted to relieve him of his psychotic symptoms by replacing them with a physical one. The symptom chosen was backache because the patient's history suggested that it would be more acceptable to him. A "conditioning" method, extending over a period of 3 months, was followed by all staff members having contact with the patient. Following this procedure, although no basic personality change occurred, the patient was able to make a satisfactory adjustment outside the hospital using his "back pain" as a defense. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phenomenal, ideal, and projected conceptions of self.

The relationship between the phenomenal, ideal, and projected self concepts in normal, neurotic, and paranoid schizophrenic Ss is investigated by comparing a self rating of present personal characteristics (phenomenal self) and ideal personal characteristics (ideal self) with the TAT hero characteristics of each S based on five TAT stories (projective self). The results indicate that normals have positive attitudes towards the self on a realistic basis. The paranoid schizophrenic group revealed positive self attitudes which were reflective of self enhancing defenses and were based on unrealistic self appraisal. The neurotic group maintained negative self attitudes based on a realistic perception of disturbances within the self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Attribution and expressed emotion in the relatives of patients with schizophrenia": Correction to Brewin, MacCarthy, Duda, and Vaughn (1991).

Reports an error in "Attribution and expressed emotion in the relatives of patients with schizophrenia" by Chris R. Brewin, Brigid MacCarthy, Karin Duda and Christine E. Vaughn (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1991[Nov], Vol 100[4], 546-554). An incorrect sentence was published. The sentence that ends the fourth paragraph on p. 547 ought to read: A more recent onset of illness would be expected to produce more unstable attributions, and more disturbed behavior (particularly involving violence toward the relative) would be expected to produce attributions that were more internal and personal to the patient but more external and uncontrollable as regards the relative. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1992-12907-001.) Indexes of expressed emotion (EE) in 58 relatives of patients with schizophrenia were related to those relatives' spontaneously expressed causal beliefs about the illness and about related symptoms and behaviors. Relatives made attributions predominantly to factors external, universal, and uncontrollable from their own perspective, and to factors internal, universal, and uncontrollable from the patient's perspective. Low-EE relatives were similar in their attributions to emotionally overinvolved relatives. Compared with these 2 groups, critical and/or hostile relatives made more attributions to factors personal to and controllable by the patient. Subsequent analyses suggested that hostile relatives were further characterized by making more attributions to factors internal to the patient and by making attributions with fewer causal elements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What Is Perseverated in Schizophrenia? Evidence of Abnormal Response Plasticity in the Saccadic System.

Although perseveration is sometimes attributed to defective set switching, the authors have recently shown that set-switching is normal in schizophrenia. In this article, the authors tested for persistent states of the saccadic response system, rather than set perseveration. Schizophrenic and healthy subjects performed antisaccades and prosaccades. The authors analyzed for 3 carry-over effects. First, whereas the latency of the current saccade correlated with that of the prior saccade in both groups, the correlations under mixed-task conditions declined in healthy but not in schizophrenic subjects. Second, antisaccades in penultimate trials delayed upcoming saccades in schizophrenic but not in healthy subjects. Third, schizophrenic subjects were more likely to erroneously perseverate the direction of a prior antisaccade but not a prior prosaccade. The authors concluded that, in schizophrenia, the effects of correct antisaccades are persistent not weak. Saccades in schizophrenia are characterized by perseveration of antisaccade-induced changes in the saccadic response system rather than failures to switch task set. (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)     

Obituary: David Shakow (1901-1981).

This article describes the career and scientific achievements of David Shakow, PhD. Shakow was a major figure of 20th-century American psychology, one of only two persons honored by the American Psychological Association with two of its most prestigious awards: the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award and the Distinguished Professional Contribution Award. These two honors embodied the essence of Shakow's career. The award for scientific activity was given for basic contributions that enlarged our understanding of the processes underlying the psychological deficit manifested by schizophrenic patients. These studies spanned half a century, beginning in 1932 and concluding 50 years later, when his final publication on this subject appeared a year after his death. The award for professional achievement recognized his role as the father of contemporary clinical psychology. Shakow, by precept and example, gave meaning to the Boulder model for training clinical psychologists. He provided leadership in espousing the view that the clinical psychologist's role is that of both scientist and practitioner in the mental health field. He deeply respected both activities but gave primacy to the clinical psychologist as research scientist. His credo was one that, on reflection, was as applicable to the practitioner as it was to the researcher. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Persistence of maladaptive responses in schizophrenia.

30 schizophrenic patients and 30 psychiatric aides were required in 4 experimental tasks to change their responses to meet changing conditions. It was hypothesized that (a) schizophrenic patients are more likely than normals to continue a response after it becomes ineffective; (b) the persistence of the maladaptive response is a function of the severity of schizophrenia. As predicted, the patients persisted longer than the aides in the first learned but later maladaptive responses, and there was some evidence that degree of resistance to change was related to the severity of schizophrenia in the patient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of social and nonsocial censure on stimulus generalization in neurotics and schizophrenics.

36 schizophrenic and 36 neurotic depressive Ss were given a visual-spatial generalization task under either social or nonsocial (impersonal) censure conditions. The following hypotheses derived from previous investigations were tested: (1) schizophrenics would show higher gradients of generalization than neurotic depressives, and (2) generalization gradients would be higher under conditions of social as opposed to nonsocial censure, especially in schizophrenics. The data supported Hypothesis 1 but not Hypothesis 2. There was no evidence for differential responding between these 2 groups with respect to either stimulus generalization or response to censure. It was suggested that hypotheses concerning the schizophrenic's performance in these 2 situations have been biased and oversimplified by use of normal, rather than patient, control groups in previous investigations. (22 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship between agreeing response set and social desirability.

3 measures of response set and 5 content scales were administered to 125 schizophrenic patients and 135 college Ss. The data indicate that the Overall Agreement Score which ostensibly measures an agreeing response set also contains negative social desirability (SD). SD18 also appears to have a naysaying element in it. The results also show that truly balanced measures of acquiescence and Social Desirability might very well be orthogonal to each other and support both sets of authors' contentions that their scales are not necessarily associated with elements of the other response set. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Schizophrenic intellectual impairment: uniform or differential?

The SRA Tests of Primary Mental Abilities were selected as instruments to investigate the hypothesis that differential impairment of intellectual test performance is a concomitant of schizophrenia. A wide variety of hospitalized schizophrenic and normal subjects matched roughly as to age and education were used. The results of this investigation do not support the hypothesis of differential impairment of schizophrenic test performance; however, severe overall impairment of schizophrenic intellectual performance and differential impairment of performance on certain kinds of intellectual tasks as a result of aging in normals were clearly shown. 28 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)