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Biomedical subjects

L Kayton

Publications and source records attributed to L Kayton.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1977

Anhedonia and schizophrenia.

The authors administered semi-structured interviews to 187 psychiatric inpatients to determine the role of anhedonia in schizophrenia. The interviews were taperecorded and then given blind ratings for anhedonia on a 7-point scale. Schizophrenic patients had significantly more anhedonia than nonschizophrenics, although many of the latter group had anhedonic tendencies. Most of the difference between the groups resulted from high anhedonia scores for chronic schizophrenics; less anhedonia was found in the acute schizophrenic patients. The data indicate that anhedonia is not necessary or unique to schizophrenia but is a prominent factor in chronic schizophrenia.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1976

Short term memory for numerousness in schizophrenic young adults.

The short term memory of schizophrenics for random dot patterns was examined by a delayed comparison procedure. In experiment 1, the 10 schizophrenics and 10 normals compared a fixed dot pattern (standard) with a variable dot pattern (compairson) appearing 2 or 8 seconds later and decided whether the comparison stimulus had "more" or "less" dots than the standard. Memory strength, indexed by the d' value of signal-detection theory, showed neither group difference nor decay over time. In experiment 2, the interstimulus interval was filled with an unjudged dot pattern (storage interference), and the standard stimulus followed the variable comparison stimulus (encoding difficulty). The memory strength of 17 schizophrenics and 17 normals was severely impaired, and their memory strength weakened over time, but again, no group differences were found. In both experiments, the two groups showed a strong bias (beta) in underestimating the first (to-be-remembered) stimulus. It was concluded that schizophrenics' short term perceptual memory for nonverbal stimuli remains good.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

Postpsychotic state, convalescent environment, and therapeutic relationship in schizophrenic outcome.

The authors evaluated the following variables in the 2-3-year outcomes of 30 schizophrenic patients: the acute/chronic dichotomy, the presence of a postpsychotic regressive state, the quality of the convalescent environment, and the formation of a therapeutic relationship. They found that the presence of a postpsychotic regressive state was not associated with either good or poor short-term outcome; that the diagnosis of acute schizophrenia was almost invariably followed by good outcome, but a diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia had little predictive value; and that a favorable convalescent environment and the presence of a therapeutic relationship were signigicantly associated with good outcome.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1975

Hypohedonia in schizophrenia.

The affective disorder in schizophrenia is an important manifestation of the schizophrenic illness. Such clinical features of joylessness, interpersonal aversion, and affective blunting have been considered by Rado and Meehl to represent a neurophysiological deficit in pleasure capacity which they termed anhedonia, but is more aptly characterized by the term hypohedonia. A free-recall task employing 24 affectively laden words presented in random order over nine trials was given to a carefully selected group of nonpsychotic hospitalized schizophrenics, hospitalized nonschizophrenics, and normals. The results of the study demonstrate that normals remember pleasant words to a significantly greater extent than upleasant words. This Pollyanna tendency or the tendency to utilize pleasant words over upleasant words has been described by Osgood as a stable cross-cultural phenomenon. By contrast, the schizophrenics show a significantly lower recall of pleasant words when compared with normals, although they remember unpleasant words to a comparable degree as normals. These findings provide experimental support for the hypohedonia hypothesis in schizophrenia. The nonshcizophrenic patients recall pleasant and unpleasant words to a significantly greater degree than neutral words. They are thus affectively governed in the free-recall task and seem equally sensitized to both pleasant and unpleasant affect in their mnemonic processing.

Adolescent↗