Although overinclusion is hypothesized to be a thought disorder, it has been found to be related to positive variables – good prognosis, good premorbidity, and good picture recognition. We hypothesized that some overinclusive responses involved an alternative classification system to conventional logical classification and that these alternative systems might facilitate picture recognition performance. Twenty‐seven male schizophrenics were given the Object Classification Test, the Object Sorting Test, and a picture recognition task. In addition to standard measures of overinclusion, responses were categorized according to (a) extent to which objects were classified consistently and exhaustively by common attributes; and (b) adequacy of the common attributes employed. Four separable kinds of responses were found: nonlogical classification, reclassification (ability to change the basis of sorting), classification that engages the logical task, but does so imperfectly (logical approximates), and overextensiveness (making an overly general, nonexclusive category). Only the first two were related positively to recognition performance. These results suggest that overinclusion measures several different response tendencies and that some of them, but not all, help schizophrenics to compensate for their disorder.