Associative intrusions in vocabulary performance of schizophrenic, nonschizophrenic and nonpsychiatric patients

Recently (1973),Rattan and Chapman reported the use of the first testing instrument capable of separating specific from generalized human performance deficits and were able to show the presence of specific associative intrusion deficits in the vocabulary performance of chronic schizophrenics. The Rattan and Chapman Multiple-Choice Vocabulary Test which consists of subtests with and without associative distractors that are matched on discriminating power was administered in the present study to 84 hospitalized patients who were equally distributed into schizophrenic, nonschizophrenic, and nonpsychiatric patient groups. The patients in these groups were also divided on the basis of length of hospitalization into long- and short term samples. The subjects' vocabulary accuracy was analyzed in order to ascertain whether a heightened susceptibility toward associative intrusions can be found in patients other than chronic schizophrenics and whether length of hospitalization has any effect on the patients' vocabulary performance. The results showed that all long-term patients exhibited significant performance deficits on the subtest with associative distractors compared to their performance on the matched subtest without associative distractors. Of the short-term patients, only schizophrenics showed a tendency toward a similar susceptibility to associative distractors. These results, though supportive of the associative interference theory of schizophrenia, also indicate that this deficit is not peculiar to schizophrenia; rather, it may be related to prolonged institutionalization regardless of psychiatric or nonpsychiatric diagnosis.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofGraduat