| Abstract: | Compared the response times of 32 process schizophrenics and 16 nonhospitalized matched controls on 3 visual search tasks. Exp I involved the location of a target letter within an array of different background letters. Other experiments required a same–different response. Exp II involved the identification of a single different letter set within the uniform context of a square display formed by up to 40 replicates of another letter. Exp III presented 2 3–6 letter clusters in a single horizontal line. The 2 clusters were identical or had 1 different letter. Word and nonword clusters were used. Paranoid and nonparanoid groups did not differ on any measure. Schizophrenic response times were about 1 sec longer, but measures of rate of increase in response time with number of letters displayed did not generally differ significantly between groups. Schizophrenics tended to make more errors. Experimental manipulations affected the response times and error rates of schizophrenics and controls alike, and to much the same degree. Results suggest that process schizophrenics are not abnormally slow when extracting information from visual displays, and they appear to perform operations and strategies similar to those of normals when doing so. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
