Ego impairment in schizophrenia as reflected in the Object Sorting Test.

Matched groups of schizophrenics and neurotics (a group which also included personality disorders), were compared on their performance on the Object Sorting Test. The schizophrenics could be significantly differentiated from the neurotics (and personality disorders) by virtue of their conceptualizations involving open-private ideas (à la McGaughran and Moran, 1956), inappropriate sorting, peculiar verbalizations, and perseverative thinking. The results are related to ego impairment in schizophrenia, and add to the capacity of this test of conceptual thinking to distinguish the thinking activity of schizophrenics from that of most other psychiatric patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)