The nature and measurement of schizophrenic thought disorder

Abstract

The work to be reported is a replication and refinement of a previous study (Bannister, 1960). As preface to the previous study, four traditional approaches to the problem of schizophrenic thought disorder were briefly reviewed, namely “dissociation” (Kretschmer 1936), “deterioration in mental efficiency” (Babcock, 1933), “concretism” (Kasanin 1946) and “overinclusion” (Payne, Matussek and George, 1959). These explanations and the experimental work arising from them were not utilized in the current research since it is argued that they suffer from three major defects.