Schizophrenic Thinking in a Probabilistic Situation

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the utilization of a new technique for the study of schizophrenic thinking. 48 hospitalized schizophrenics were confronted with tasks which required inferences to be made on the basis of cues having uncertain relationships with a criterion. The tasks varied according to the number of cues which must be effectively utilized and were presented by means of both impersonal and socially-relevant stimuli. The results indicated that schizophrenics function as well as normals on impersonal tasks in which the use of limited cues is required. Their performance is increasingly impaired as more cues must be effectively integrated, and their functioning on tasks with interpersonal relevance is uniformly inadequate. Normals function with equal adequacy on impersonal and socially-relevant tasks regardless of the range of cues which must be utilized.