Limits to conceptual rule-learning by schizophrenic patients

✍ Scribed by Lyle E. Bourne Jr.; Thomas Abraham; John T. Brauchi; Don R. Justesen; Caroline Beeker; Leighton C. Whitaker; R. A. Yaroush

• Book ID: 102675499
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1977
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 948 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-9762
• DOI: 10.1002/1097-4679(197704)33:2<324::aid-jclp2270330202>3.0.co;2-r

✦ Synopsis

Two studies of conceptual rule-learning by 36 hospitalized psychiatric patients revealed that (a) while all were clinically diagnosed as schizophrenic, they differed widely in their ability to discover abstract rules; (b) the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST) strong1 predicted the patients' ability to learn and to apply a conceptual rule; an8(c) regardless of severit,y of conceptual impairment, the patients were unaffected by modest levels of externally generated irrelevant information as presented through the modality of vision. Deficits in abstractive ability, when they exist, are believed to be due to a schizophrenic patient's inability to prevent task-irrelevant information that originates in long-term memory from spilling into and despoiling the operations of working memory.