Continued word association in hypothetically psychosis-prone college students.

Abstract

Male college students who scored deviantly high (2.0 standard deviations above the mean) on the Physical Anhedonia Scale, the Perceptual Aberration-Magical Ideation (Per-Mag) Scale, or the Nonconformity Scale were compared with control subjects on either a structured (N = 63) or an unstructured (N = 81) continued word-association task. This task has often been used as a measure of psychotic thought disorder. On the unstructured .word-association task, per-mag subjects produced proportionately more unusual idiosyncratic responses (p < .05), proportionately fewer common responses (p < .05), fewer popular responses (p < .05), and lower response commonality scores (p < .05) than did control subjects, and these differences were due to those per-mag subjects who had also scored at least 1 standard deviation above the mean on the Nonconformity Scale. These findings show mild cognitive slippage in these subjects. The results support the validity of the Per-Mag Scale as a measure of psychosis proneness and the validity of the Nonconformity Scale as a potentiator in the identification of psychosis proneness.

Seeing non-existent events: Effects of environmental conditions, schizotypal symptoms, and sub-clinical characteristics

“…Correspondingly, high schizotypal students in the present study were perhaps inclined to decide that internally generated events (e.g., word associations triggered by presentations of non-words) were external events. This account seems to be supported by evidence that positive schizotypal symptoms predict an increased generation of word associations (Miller & Chapman, 1983;Tsakanikos & Claridge, 2005). Loosening of associations in schizophrenia (e.g., Kwapil Hegley, Chapman, & Chapman 1990), and positive schizotypy (Mohr, Graves, Gianotti, Pizzagalli, & Bragger, 2001), have also been documented.…”

Abandoning the concept of ‘schizophrenia‘: Some implications of validity arguments for psychological research into psychotic phenomena

“…Research into schizotypal traits in normal individuals has already shown promise in this respect (e.g. Chapman Chapman, Chapman & Raulin, 1976;Chapman, Edell & Chapman, 1980;Jakes & Hemsley, 1986;Miller & Chapman, 1983;Rawlings & Claridge, 1984). Indeed, given the evidence linking these traits to psychotic symptoms it is difficult to see how biologically orientated investigators (e.g.…”

Do Positive Schizotypal Symptoms Predict False Perceptual Experiences in Nonclinical Populations?

“…At an early stage, simultaneous presentation of fast moving nonwords may have generated past associations or verbal representations of corresponding words on the basis of some superficial similarity. Although such generated events could have occurred for every participant regardless of their schizotypy status, high-schizotypy scorers tend to produce proportionately more uncommon verbal associations on word-association tasks (Miller and Chapman, 1983). A cognitive experience of this type could be interpreted either as an internally generated event ("I just saw something that looked like the word ZEBRA, but this word is not actually there"-rejection of the externality hypothesis) or as an externally generated event ("I just saw the word ZEBRA"-acceptance of the externality hypothesis).…”