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Biomedical subjects

M Harrow

Publications and source records attributed to M Harrow.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1979

Schizophrenic thought disorders: bizarre associations and intermingling.

The authors assessed bizarre verbalizations elicited from 37 schizophrenic and 16 nonschizophrenic patients. Interviews with subjects indicated that much bizarre schizophrenic language results from patients intermingling material from past and current experiences into their verbalizations. This intermingled material comes from many different problem areas rather than one central emotional complex. It does not arise from emotional overresponsiveness, overinvolved thinking, or delusional ideation. Two factors hypothesized as responsible for bizarre schizophrenic language are the schizophrenic's monitoring problems and difficulty maintaining perspective about his own behavior.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Intermingling and disordered logic as influences on schizophrenic 'thought disorders'.

A technique was devised to elicit bizarre or idiosyncratic responses from 30 young schizophrenics, who were then re-interviewed a week later to determine the reasons for each patient's idiosyncratic verbalizations. Taped interviews of the schizophrenics, scored along a series of rating scales, indicated: (1) An overt mechanism involved in bizarre schizophrenic language is a tendency to intermingle into their responses material from their current and past experiences. (2) Careful analysis suggests that the seemingly bizarre intermingled material of schizophrenics usually is close to the original "correct" topic. (3) The bizarre intermingled material is related to the patients' personal lives. (4) The intermingled material does not usually represent a failure to screen out or repress primitive drive dominated sexual or aggressive material. (5) Disordered logic was not a major factor in accounting for bizarre schizophrenic language.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Is modern-day schizophrenic outcome still negative?

To evaluate formulations about more positive outcome in modern-day schizophrenic patients, the authors assessed 132 young patients 2.7 years after hospital discharge. Despite modern treatment techniques, only 14%-17% of the 79 schizophrenic patients in the study group were functioning effectively without relapses; 50% had adjusted very poorly. The schizophrenic patients were functioning significantly more poorly than the nonschizophrenic patients in all areas (p less than .01), showing poor adjustment, high symptom levels, and high rehospitalization rates. The two major acute subgroups (schizo-affective and acute schizophrenic patients) were functioning better than those with paranoid and chronic schizophrenia. Overall, the authors conclude, diagnosis carries prognostic implications. Schizophrenic outcome is more favorable today than it was in Bleuler and Kraepelin's era, but it is still relatively negative.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1978

First-rank symptoms in the postacute schizophrenic: a follow-up study.

Schneider's diagnostic system of first-rank symptoms (FRS) is acknowledged by psychiatrists throughout the world as a decisive basis for the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Recently, the author's and others' works have challenged this view. This report examines the relationship between FRS, psychotic symptoms, prognosis, and outcome at the postacute stage. The assessment of FRS was made from an interview schedule (a modification of the Wing Present State Examination) developed for the systematic assessment of psychotic symptoms. The results question the utility of FRS as a primary diagnostic approach to schizophrenia, suggesting that Schneider's system may not be superior to other diagnostic approaches.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1978

Overinclusion and transactional thinking on the Object Sorting Test of schizophrenic and nonschizophrenic patients.

Two aspects of "disordered thinking", overinclusion and transactional thinking were studied on the Object Sorting Test responses of 20 young schizophrenic patients and 20 comparable nonschizophrenic patients. Patients' parents were also studied for comparison. In addition, idiosyncratic responses from WAIS Comprehension items were assessed for comparison of another measure on another test. Transactional thinking and idiosyncratic responses were greater in schizophrenic patients. Conceptual overinclusion and bizarre responses also tended to be more frequent in schizophrenics, but behavioral overinclusion showed no differences. Conceptual overinclusion was consistently correlated with transactional thinking and idiosyncratic responses, while behavioral overinclusion showed an inconsistent pattern. The differences were attributed to the differences in the specificity of measures of disordered thinking.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1977

Is disordered thinking unique to schizophrenia?

To provide data on several issues related to disordered thinking in schizophrenia, 200 acutely ill psychiatric patients (including 55 schizophrenics) were evaluated on four instruments to assess thought pathology (the Object Sorting Test, the Rorschach Test, a social comprehension test, and a proverbs test). Patients were assessed at two phases of their disorders (the acute phase and the phase of partial recovery). The results suggest (1) disordered thinking is not unique to schizophrenia; (2) distinctions between mild and severe levels of thought pathology are important; and (3) disordered thinking is influenced by acute psychopathology and acute upset. Inferential evidence suggests (4) disordered thinking fits along a continuum with normal thinking; (5) "thought disorders" are not a discrete, separate entity, standing apart from other aspects of thinking; and (6) older concepts about primary symptoms in schizophrenia need reexamination.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1977

Psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia after the acute phase.

Sixty schizophrenic and 34 nonschizophrenic patients were assessed 3 years after discharge on 17 types of psychotic symptoms. Schizophrenics were significantly higher than nonschizophrenic patients on the overall index of psychotic features (p less than .01) and on the index of delusions (p less than .01). Using a weighted estimate, 38.5 percent of the nonparanoid schiziphrenics showed clear evidence of psychotic features, and another 20.5 percent showed some evidence of psychotic features which were weak or sporadic or which the patients seemed able to bring into perspective. Schizophrenic subdiagnosis did not predict later psychotic sysmptoms, although there was a trend for more psychotic features in paranoid and in chronic schizophrenics. The belief that psychotic symptoms in schiziphrenia are not just temporary states was supported. However, conceptions about psychotic symptoms persisting in all schizophrenics were not affirmed.

Acute Disease↗
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

Loose associations and disordered speech patterns in chronic schizophrenia.

The present research involves the development and utilization of a method to evaluate the free speech of chronic schizophrenic patients to measure aspects of thought disorder. Using this technique, two samples (one chronically hospitalized, the other nonhospitalized) of 15 chronic schizophrenic subjects each studied and compared. Severe types of looseness of association were not a prominent finding in the patients studied. On several of the other categories of speech patterns in investigated, multiyear hospitalized chronic schizophrenics were found to have significantly higher scores than a sample of chronic schizophrenics living in the community. This included a measure of paucity of speech, of perseveration, of repetition, and a measure of overally deviant verbalizations. The chronic schizophrenic patients generally showed high degrees of perseveration and paucity of speech, variables which may be related to impoverished thinking. The significance of these results is analyzed and discussed, with several aspects of the data suggesting that the differences may be due to severity of illness. The phenomenological scoring system developed and utilized is found to be reliable and seems to represent a useful tool for the study of many aspects of the schizophrenic patient.

Ambulatory Care↗
PubMed1976

Primitive drive-dominated thinking: relationship to acute schizophrenia and sociopathy.

To investigate primitive drive-dominated thinking in schizophrenic disorders and sociopathic behavior, responses on the Rorschach and other personality tests of 171 acute psychiatric patients were assessed using Holt's system. Results suggested that: (a) Acute schizophrenics were high on primitive drive content, but this was also characteristic of some nonschizophrenics, and other types of disturbed thinking were even more prominent in schizophrenics. (b) There were no significant differences between process and reactive schizophrenics in expression of primitive drive content. (c) Males showed more drive-dominated thinking than females (p less than .10), although sex was not a powerful variable. (d) Depressives showed less drived-dominated thinking than nondepressive (p less than .05). (e) Patients high on sociopathic or rule-breaking behavior tended to show more primitive drive-dominated thinking (p less than .01).

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1975

Looseness of associations in acute schizophrenia.

To study looseness of associations and other theoretically relevant variables of speech pathology, 51 acute psychiatric patients, including 26 schizophrenics, were studied at the acute phase of their disorder by means of a free verbalization interview. The results on these 51 patients during the acute period were: 1. There were clear differences between the schizophrenic patient group and the control patient group, the overall index of deviant verbalizations being significant at the .001 level. 2. Many types of looseness were found in non-schizophrenic patients as well as in schizophrenics. Except at the very mildest levels, however, the variants of overt looseness were strikingly more frequent in occurrence and severe in degree in the schizophrenic group (p smaller than .01). 3. Gaps in communication, vagueness of ideas and blocking, though present to some degree in our control group, were much more common in the schizophrenic sample (p smaller than .001). 4. In the control group of patients, private meanings (including neologisms), repetition and perseveration were extremely rare, and current delusional thinking virtually non-existent. Private meanings and current delusional thinking were conspicuously present in the schizophrenic sample; repetition and perseveration were present to a mild degree in this acute schizophrenic sample. 5. Schizophrenic patients tend to show more looseness of associations when faced with a request to talk about topics not related to their illness.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Kinesthetic figural aftereffects in acute schizophrenia: a style of processing stimuli.

The Kinesthetic Figural Aftereffect test was administered to 106 psychiatric inpatients to assess styles of stimulus processing in schizophrenia. Three conditions were used: (1) standard stimulus conditions at the acute phase; (2) standard conditions, 7 wk. later, to evaluate stability over time; (3) reversed stimulus conditions to assess kinesthetic figural aftereffect generality under different stimulus conditions. Results indicated that: (1) schizophrenics reduced stimuli, but differences between patient groups were not significant. (2) Kinesthetic figural aftereffect stability over time was shown by nonschizophrenics (p less than .01) but not by schizophrenic and borderline patients. (3) All diagnostic groups reversed kinesthetic figural aftereffect responses under reversed stimulus conditions, e.g., former "augmenters" tended to reduce more under agumenting conditions, suggesting the importance of the specific stimulus conditions. (4) Acute schizophrenics showed a stimulus-governed style. (5) The results raise questions about kinesthetic figural aftereffects as a measure of response style.

Acute Disease↗