title: A comparative study of attentional strategies of schizophrenic and highly creative normal subjects.
abstract: Frequent references have been made to the similarities between highly creative and psychotic thinking. This study attempts to test the hypothesis that one explanation for such a correspondence lies in the fact that individuals in both these populations habitually employ common attentional strategies which cause them to sample an unusually wide range of available environmental stimuli. A group of highly creative adults and a group of equally intelligent but low creative adults were compared with a group of acute non-paranoid schizophrenic adults on three tests designed to assess attentional and other cognitive styles. The results offer support to the view that both highly creative and schizophrenic individuals habitually sample a wider range of available environmental input than do less creative individuals. In the case of the schizophrenic this involuntary widening of attention tends to have a deleterious effect on performance, while, in contrast, the highly creative individual is more able to successfully process the greater input without this incurring a performance deficit.
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D001244:Association; D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003405:Creativity; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D006801:Humans; D007257:Information Theory; D007360:Intelligence; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000175:diagnosis; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology