Thought disorder and verbal recall in acutely psychotic patients

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between thought disorder and verbal recall in schizophrenic, manic, and schizoaffective inpatients. Based on previous research, it was predicted that subjects who demonstrated only positive thought-disorder would differ from those with positive and negative thought-disorder in terms of their ability to encode short descriptive passages. Unlike controls, who were able to encode organized material better than unorganized material, neither thought-disorder group improved its encoding when the material to be remembered was more organized. Both thought-disorder groups remembered more when the material was less organized. These findings raise a number of issues with regard to the interrelationship among thought disorders, psychiatric diagnoses, and information-processing deficits.