Conceptual behavior in psychotic and normal adolescents.

Abstract
This study has investigated conceptual behavior in 16 psychotic adolescents matched with 16 adjusted adolescents on age, IQ, and socioeconomic status. A picture sorting test was administered to both groups. Psychotic adolescents categorize and verbalize less adequately than matched controls. Psychotic adolescents use narrower categories than control subjects, perhaps reflecting an inability to reduce effectively the complexity of a stimulus array. In the qualitative analyses of verbalizations, it was found that psychotics use more idiosyncratic verbalizations, possibly indicating the greater privacy and autism of their thinking processes. The conceptual level of the verbalizations offered by the psychotics was less "abstract". Social and emotional content seems to have no effect on categorization and verbalization variables in psychotics.

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