Stimulus integration in schizophrenia.
Twenty-four chronic institutionalized schizophrenics and 11 acute non-institutionalized schizophrenics were compared with 20 controls (matched for age, sex and socio-economic status) on a task normally eliciting stimulus integration (Garner, 1974). The subjects had to classify the widths of a sequence of rectangles into one of four categories while ignoring their height. Each response was timed. Although all the patients performed the task more slowly than their appropriate control group, the results showed that schizophrenic patients integrated these simple stimuli just as do normal subjects. Thus failure of simple stimulus integration is not a feature of schizophrenia.
D000208:Acute Disease; D000328:Adult; D002908:Chronic Disease; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012858:Size Perception