The relationship between impaired selective attention and severity of psychopathology in acute psychiatric patients

Thirty acute psychiatric patients were administered a battery of selective attention and cognitive ability measures to determine whether there is a differential deficit in filtering capacity with increasing degrees of psychopathology. Susceptibility to intrusions in the early stages of auditory selective attention was positively related to degree of disturbance, but no more so than were other cognitive disabilities. Slowness of information processing, rather than impaired selective attention, bore the strongest relationship to severity of disturbance and appeared to be the best index of general cognitive inefficiency. It was concluded that the defective filter theories of schizophrenic deficit hold little promise for explaining how psychopathology affects cognitive functioning across a continuum of levels of disturbance.