Schizophrenics' responses to autonomous and experimenter-controlled conditions.
Four groups of hospitalized VA patients were administered a reaction time task in which the conditions of stimulus presentation varied from subject autonomy to experimenter control. Questionnaires were administered to assess patients' self-reports of locus of control (Rotter's I-E scale) and their perceptions of their mothers' child rearing attitudes (Schaefer's CRPBI). Reaction times of chronic schizophrenics were significantly slower than poor and good premorbid acute schizophrenics and nonpsychotics, and the poor but not the good premorbids were significantly slower than the nonpsychotics. The autonomy-control manipulations produced a trend supporting the finding of Cromwell et al. that chronic schizophrenics perform best in an experimenter-controlled condition whereas nonpsychotics do best in an autonomous condition. Variation of these treatments, however, caused no differences in acute schizophrenics' task performance. When examined together, the reaction time and questionnaire findings suggest that autonomy and generalized locus of control are not salient factors in explaining schizophrenic performance deficit.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011930:Reaction Time; D012107:Research Design; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology