Psychological experiments with disordered persons.

Abstract

In a recent examination of the status of the psychology of the abnormal, W. A. Hunt and C. Landis have pointed out that one of the glaring deficiencies in the textbooks of this subject and of psychiatry is the omission of the available experimental results. 1 In view of the possibility that this omission may be partially due to the fact that these results have never been collected and made available in one place, we have undertaken this review. 2 While there is no logical excuse to divide the experimental work in this field on lines of language, the volume of the material and the fact that only the English titles have been examined in any degree of comprehensiveness by the writer at the present has led to this kind of presentation. Thus, although incomplete, this review is a beginning of a collection of the available experimental knowledge of psychotic patients, and the

Psychological investigations of cognitive deficit in elderly psychiatric patients.

“…Hunt (44) noted in his review of such studies that: "The control of most of the psychological governors is inadequate because it is not understood. Even the conception of memory varies.…”

A learning theory approach to research in schizophrenia.

“…RESEARCH ON CONDITIONING, LEARNING, AND GEN-ERALIZATION The lack of anxiety of the schizophrenic, often considered an aspect of "flat affect" or emotionlessness, has received considerable attention in the clinical and experimental literature (1,4,6,30). This reduction in reactivity has also been the focus of many theoretical discussions of the disorder.…”

“…Thus, in contrast to the conditioning-type situation, it is predicted that in complex response situations schizophrenics will reach a criterion more slowly than normals and with more errors. Relative to this prediction there are a considerable array of studies demonstrating poor performance by schizophrenics in complex tasks (4,30,31). The Es often report that the schizophrenics' performance is retarded by irrelevant, incorrect responses.…”

Some rapprochements in contemporary psychology.

“…I must not omit-yet must not, for time's sake, elaborate-the wide variety of experimental investigations being made on abnormal persons in many hospital laboratories, represented for instance by some papers on our Wednesday afternoon program. There the clinical attitude is set aside, and the patients are studied not as individuals but as representatives of their disease classifications, and their various abilities and performances are investigated to furnish bases for generalization regarding, say, the effect of reduced insight upon the GSR, or the effect of color on neurasthenics, or the reaction time of manic-depressives, or the startle response in catatonics (27,28).…”