Dichotic listening and allusive thinking

SynopsisPrevious work suggests that allusive thinkers have a broader attentional process associated with weak central inhibition. The method of dichotic stimulation was used to investigate this concept. Sixty-three university students completed a battery of tests including 2 dichotic listening tasks. The Object Sorting Test was used as a measure of allusive thinking.Allusive thinkers showed a trend towards impaired shadowing performance. Mislabelling of shadow as distractor words andvice versa, on recall and recognition tasks, showed the strongest correlation with allusive thinking. Such mislabelling was considered to reflect impaired discrimination learning, and provides further support for a hypothesis relating allusive thinking to weak Pavlovian central inhibition.

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Familial Relationships of Allusive Thinking in University Students and Their Parents

The British Journal of Psychiatry ◽

10.1192/bjp.114.514.1079 ◽

1968 ◽

Vol 114 (514) ◽

pp. 1079-1087 ◽

Cited By ~ 37

Author(s):

N. McConaghy ◽

M. Clancy

Keyword(s):

University Students ◽

Mentally Ill ◽

Psychiatric Patients ◽

Cultural Background ◽

Thought Disorder ◽

Control Group ◽

Conceptual Level ◽

Formal Thought Disorder ◽

Object Sorting ◽

Sorting Test

Rapaport (1945) was the first worker to advance evidence that at least two types of formal thought disorder contributed to the disturbance of thinking found in schizophrenia; and furthermore that neither of these types of thinking was specific to schizophrenia. Rapaport administered the Bolles Goldstein Object Sorting Test to 217 psychiatric patients and to a control group of 54 patrolmen. He found that schizophrenics showed a tendency to function more at a concrete level and less at an abstract conceptual level, as described first by Vigotsky (1934). This tendency was also shown by depressives and by persons who were not mentally ill but had a poor cultural background.

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Allusive thinking, the Word Halo and verbosity

Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0033291700004414 ◽

1977 ◽

Vol 7 (3) ◽

pp. 439-445 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

M. S. Armstrong ◽

N. McConaghy

Keyword(s):

University Students ◽

Attention Process ◽

Object Sorting ◽

Sorting Test

SynopsisThe concept of allusive thinking is briefly reviewed and a Pavlovian model of thinking advanced. It is hypothesized that allusive, as compared with non-allusive thinkers, have a broader but less intense attention process associated with weaker inhibition. From this model it was predicted that on word tests which require judgements of similarity of meaning, allusive thinkers would tend to choose more remote or unusual words as similar in meaning.The Word Halo Test and the Word Sorting Test were administered to 63 university students using the Object Sorting Test as a measure of allusive thinking. The prediction that allusive thinkers would choose more unusual words as similar in meaning was supported. A tendency for allusive thinkers to be more verbose than non-allusive thinkers was also noted.

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Should we Ignore Dimensional Risk Factors in Prevention of Schizophrenia? Signposts to Prevention

Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry ◽

10.1177/000486740003401s04 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 34 (1_suppl) ◽

pp. A22-A25 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Nathaniel McConaghy

Keyword(s):

Intervention Studies ◽

Low Risk ◽

Cognitive Factors ◽

Abstract Thinking ◽

Effective Prevention ◽

Genetic Transmission ◽

Cognitive Markers ◽

P300 Potentials ◽

Object Sorting ◽

Sorting Test

Objective The objective was to outline the development of the concept of allusive thinking as a genetic marker of predisposition to schizophrenia and relate this to other cognitive markers of this predisposition. Method Publications were reviewed which were considered relevant to the objective. Results Allusive thinking as detected clinically could be measured objectively from subjects' performance on an Object Sorting Test. Using this test it was shown that parents, both of patients with schizophrenia and of university students with allusive thinking, themselves showed allusive thinking, indicating it was familially transmitted. Subjects with allusive thinking showed reduced cortical evoked brain P300 potentials, suggesting the transmission was genetic. The hypothesis that allusive thinking was associated with weaker cortical inhibitory processes was supported by the finding that subjects with such thinking chose more remote word associations. It was suggested that reasons allusive thinking has not been used as a marker in intervention studies is that as a dimension of abstract thinking, marked allusive thinking is not associated with a high risk of developing schizophrenia, and that administration of the Object Sorting Test is time-consuming. Other dimensional cognitive factors, such as psychoticism and perceptual anhedonia and aberration, are independent of allusive thinking and are also associated with a low risk of developing schizophrenia. Genetic transmission of schizophrenia would appear to involve a number of predisposing factors distributed dimensionally in the population with the contribution of each factor being small. Conclusions As they are associated with only a low risk of predisposition to schizophrenia, cognitive markers may not be of immediate value in the prevention of schizophrenia when compared with the less specific markers used for this purpose. However, it would seem that their study will be necessary if the nature of the genetic transmission of the illness is to be understood. This understanding could be expected to ultimately lead to more effective prevention.

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Conceptual Development in Advantaged and Disadvantaged Kindergarten Children

Perceptual and Motor Skills ◽

10.2466/pms.1971.32.3.711 ◽

1971 ◽

Vol 32 (3) ◽

pp. 711-717 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Elizabeth C. Thomas

Keyword(s):

Educational Level ◽

Conceptual Development ◽

Curriculum Planning ◽

Kindergarten Children ◽

Early Childhood Curriculum ◽

Mental Age ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Object Sorting ◽

Task Differences ◽

Sorting Test

This study examined conceptualization in 60 white advantaged (a) and disadvantaged ( da) kindergarten children as demonstrated by their performance on an object-sorting test. The two tasks in this test, varying in degree of structure, were referred to as spontaneous and structured sorting. Ss were equally divided as to sex. The two groups were significantly different on the following variables: mental age, educational level of father, educational level of mother, occupation of father, restriction of home environment, stimulating opportunities provided by games in the home, availability of record player, and attendance of movies. A significant difference was found in the performance of the two groups with the advantaged performing at a higher level. Sex and task differences were not significant. The failure to find a discrepancy between spontaneous and structured sorting was considered to be growth from egocentric thinking to an acquisition of greater flexibility in change of focus. The postulated five-level hierarchy in conceptual development, useful in early childhood curriculum planning, was supported by the distribution of responses.

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Ego impairment in schizophrenia as reflected in the Object Sorting Test.

Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology ◽

10.1037/h0044023 ◽

1962 ◽

Vol 64 (5) ◽

pp. 381-385 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

L. H. Silverman ◽

Doris K. Silverman

Keyword(s):

Object Sorting ◽

Ego Impairment ◽

Sorting Test

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Overinclusion and Transactional Thinking on the Object Sorting Test of Schizophrenic and Nonschizophrenic Patients

Journal of Personality Assessment ◽

10.1207/s15327752jpa4204_11 ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 42 (4) ◽

pp. 401-408 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Donald M. Quinlan ◽

K. David Schultz ◽

Robert K. Davies ◽

Martin Harrow

Keyword(s):

Object Sorting ◽

Sorting Test

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Creativity, divergent and allusive thinking in students and visual artists

Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0033291700049138 ◽

1982 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 835-841 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Peter K. Tucker ◽

Sharon J. Rothwell ◽

Michael S. Armstrong ◽

Neil McConaghy

Keyword(s):

Divergent Thinking ◽

Visual Artists ◽

Low Level ◽

Object Sorting ◽

Sorting Test

SynopsisVisual artists of acknowledged creativity but not students with divergent thinking showed allusive (loose) thinking on an Object Sorting Test. It was concluded that high but not low level creativity in some fields may be associated with a predisposition to schizophrenia.

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