Application of the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking to a non-english-speaking population

The Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST) is a pencil-and-paper test in two versions: An affectively toned and an affectively neutral version. The WIST is designed to capture various aspects of schizophrenic thinking and to distinguish it from normal cognition. The WIST was developed in the United States for use with an English-speaking population. For the research reported here, conducted in West Germany, the WIST was rendered into German and administered to patients diagnosed as acute (N = 10) and chronic schizophrenic (N = 10) patients and to groups of psychiatric (N = 10) and normal (N = 40) controls. The index values on the WIST differentiated the performance of the two schizophrenic groups from normal controls. Further, acute patients (unlike chronic schizophrenic patients) improved significantly from one test administration to the second. These results replicate WIST definition of schizophrenic thinking, which is based on nonlinguistic, cognitive variables, and the applicability of the WIST for cross-cultural diagnosis are discussed.