Nature and extent of basic cognitive deterioration in a sample of institutionalized mental patients

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Abstract
In this investigation, the basic rates of visual perception and of perceptual integration were studied in 30 psychotic patients and in a normal control group of 28. Marked differences were found. In unitary perception the psychotics required twice as long as the control group, and in integration of perceptual elements the performances of the two groups were convincingly divergent, appearing to conform to logarithmic equations of different orders. It is suggested that the phenomenon of deterioration recognized in the field of mental testing may be more closely associated with decrease in rate of perceptual integration than with decrease in capacity to memorize and infer.

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