Analogical reasoning in schizophrenic delusions

Reasoning ability has often been argued to be impaired in people with schizophrenic delusions, although evidence for this is far from convincing. This experiment examined the analogical reasoning abilities of several groups of patients, including non-deluded and deluded schizophrenics, to test the hypothesis that performance by the deluded schizophrenic group would be impaired.

Eleven deluded schizophrenics, 10 depressed subjects, seven non-deluded schizophrenics and 16 matched non-psychiatric controls, who were matched on a number of key variables, were asked to solve an analogical reasoning task.

Performance by the deluded schizophrenic group was certainly impaired when compared with the depressed and non-psychiatric control groups though less convincingly so when compared with the non-deluded schizophrenic group. The impairment shown by the deluded schizophrenic group seemed to occur at the initial stage of the reasoning task.

The particular type of impairment shown by the deluded subjects was assessed in relation to other cognitive problems already researched and the implications of these problems on reasoning tasks and theories of delusions was discussed.