Comparisons of the restricted association of chronic schizophrenic and normal control subjects.

Abstract

Eleven types of restricted associations and free associations were obtained from 24 chronic schizophrenics and 24 normal control Ss equated for age and education. The associations of schizophrenics were more variable than those of normal Ss, especially on tasks which most restricted the choice of responses. The agreement in responding between normal and schizophrenic 5s was markedly lower when compared with that between high-and low-creative 5s, or with 1-yr., testretest data. The repetition of responses given to the same stimuli under different instructions was markedly higher for schizophrenic than normal 5s, and thus the degree of task and response differentiation was reduced. The restricted associations overlapped with free associations more markedly for schizophrenic than for normal Ss, but the general structure of a conceptual semantic space was about the same for both groups. It was argued that when explicit constraint in tasks of verbal associations is high, schizophrenic 5s (more than normals) impose a low degree of implicit constraint on their verbal behavior; when the external constraint is low, they increase their implicit constraint.

A STUDY OF INTER‐ AND INTRALINGUAL ASSOCIATIONS IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN1

“…Previously, psycholinguistic performance of creative persons has been characterized by increased response variability in conjunction with well developed response preferences and sets that allow for appropriate and efficient response selections (Riegel, Riegel & Levine 1966). Psycholinguistic performance of schizophrenics can be characterized by the concepts of overreaction and counterreaction: whenever the external constraint is weak, as under free associations, schizophrenics impose their own, severe response restrictions; whenever the external constraint is strong, as under certain restricted associations, they react very "freely" (Stern & Riegel 1970). First language acquisition consists in an increase in response variability and in the development of specific response classes, both in regard to language production (Riegel, Riegel, Quarterman & Smith 1968) and language comprehension Zivian & Riegel 1969).…”