Semantic priming in nonproductive schizophrenia.
A group of 10 nonproductive schizophrenics (i.e., not experiencing hallucinations, delusions, or mood swings) was compared with a group of 10 nonpsychotic alcoholics, matched on visual acuity and reading level, in a primed word identification task. Subsets of three target words were projected onto a series of screens constructed in such a way that an increasing random proportion of the words' features were made visible. The prime was the category to which the target words belonged; the target words represented one of four levels of goodness-of-membership in the primed category. On the whole, identification thresholds in the two groups were not significantly different. However, although the alcoholics' thresholds increased rapidly as goodness-of-membership decreased, this trend was not significant in the schizophrenic group. When the target words were poor members of the primed category, the schizophrenics' thresholds were significantly lower than the alcoholics'. Such results are consistent with Feigenberg's characterization of schizophrenia as a disturbance in the process of probabilistic prognosis.
D000437:Alcoholism / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012660:Semantics