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An experimental test of two opposing theories of the perception deficit in schizophrenia
Author(s) -
Meadow Arnold,
Donlon Patrick,
Wahba Michel,
Tupin Joe P.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/1097-4679(197910)35:4<707::aid-jclp2270350404>3.0.co;2-e
Subject(s) - psychology , memory span , audiology , affect (linguistics) , perception , fluphenazine , test (biology) , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , cognition , psychiatry , medicine , working memory , communication , neuroscience , haloperidol , paleontology , biology , dopamine
Devised the experiment to test two alternate theories of the etiology of the perceptual defect in schizophrenia: The theory supported by Searles and Hartmann that it is a secondary recation to defense and that proposed by McGhie that it is a primary defecrt. Two groups ( N = 32) of schizophrenic patients were compared, one of which was administered low doses and the other hight doses of fluphenazine HCL. Both groups were given before medication and 7 days after medication a batery of five‐digit span tests. The tests differed in that they were accompanied by orally presented distracting words presented with varying combinations of emotional and neutral content and affect or with no distracting stimuli. Results indicated that patients administered high as compared to patients administered low doswages of medication performed significantly better on two‐digit span tests, the test comprised of words with emotional content presented. with neutral affect, and the test with no‐distracting stimuli. Because the higher dosage did not produced greater improvement on the test that utilized emotional‐distracting stimuli than on the test accompanied by no distracting stimuli, the results are interpreted as supporting the theory of McGhie.