No abstract

No abstract

This study is intended to yield information about the type of task that a chronic schizophrenic might be expected to succeed at and, conversely, the conditions under which their disabilities are magnified. The primary purpose is to obtain data to act as a guide in the design of work for such patients, and secondly to produce more general information about the differences between the normal person and the chronic schizophrenic on sequential operations. The task studied involved primarily both long and short-term memory functions, together with the associated processes of attention.

To make a comparative study of the fatiguability of chronic schizophrenics and non-psychotic depressives and to test Kraepelin's hypothesis that schizophrenia is typified by rapid and acute fall-off in work performance (Kraepelin, 1910). Kraepelin's explanation of the cause of this fall-off was in terms of constriction of volition. However, on the basis of operational definitions, there appears to be little justification for regarding the phenomenon as other than a special case of fatiguability.

No abstract