Schizophrenic reasoning about affect-laden material.
Drug-free schizophrenic patients (N equals 74) and nonpsychotic subjects (N equals 206) were given a test of affect-laden and affectively neutral multiple choice analogy items. The two subtests were matched on several psychometric characteristics that determine the power of the test to distinguish the more able from the less able normal subjects. Neither newly admitted schizophrenic nor long-term chronic schizophrenic patients performed differently on the affective subtest than on the neutral subtest. The many published findings of a cognitive deficit in schizophrenia in response to affect-laden stimuli can probably be attributed to the inappropriate use of unmatched tested.
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000374:Aggression; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003858:Dependency, Psychological; D006791:Hostility; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012723:Sex; D014825:Vocabulary; D014936:Word Association Tests