Charles Neuringer

Schizophrenic avoidance of strong meaning associations to emotional words.

Abstract The effect of emotional stimuli on schizophrenic adherence to strong meaning associations (regardless of context) was investigated. A 28-item inventory composed of homographs of varying levels of meaning, strength, and emotionality was administered to schizophrenic and nonschizophrenic Ss. The results indicated that schizophrenic 5s tend to make more definitional errors by choosing incorrect weak meanings when confronted by emotional stimuli than do the controls. It was hypothesized that the choice of weak incorrect meaning associations, in relationship to emotional stimuli, was due to an avoidance procedure.

The Relationship Between Age and Qualitative or Quantitative Impairment of Abstract Reasoning in the Brain Damaged.

Abstract An attempt was made to investigate the hypothesis that type of abstract reasoning impairment was related to age. Forty brain damaged patients were divided into four age groups (30–39, 40–49, 50–59, and 60+) and evaluated by a concept identification task which yields data as to whether impairment is qualitative or quantitative. The results indicated that the greatest amount of qualitative type impairment occurred among the older brain damaged patients when compared with the other subjects.