RESUMO
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to identify differences in thinking between schizophrenic patients and healthy subjects with linguistic-philosophical approach and to develop a tool to measure pathological thinking. METHODS: Approximately 50 cards(pictures of either representational or abstract sculptures and paintings) from the previous experiment(1997) were carefully examined and 10 cards were selected based on their variety and promptness of the response. Twenty-four schizophrenic patients and 19 healthy subjects participated in this experiment. Participants were required to give a title to each picture. Their responses were analysed based on the forms of thinking, abstractness(or concreteness) and the category of the title. Each response was also coded either direct or indirect. RESULTS: 1) Schizophrenic patients emitted more direct and simple descriptive responses whereas healthy subjects showed projection-related direct traits, indirect traits, indirect association and generalization. 2) Both groups tended to utilize the whole rather than parts. Schizophrenic group depended more on the whole pictures than healthy group. Healthy subjects showed more generalization tendency with parts. 3) Both groups preferred concrete titles to abstract ones. Schizophrenic group(95.3%) used more concrete titles than healthy group(71.4%) and healthy group(28.65%) used more abstract titles than schizophrenic group(4.7%). 4) Schizophrenic patients(73.5%) showed more directness in thinking than healthy subjects, whereas healthy subjects(58.7%) more indirectness. CONCLUSIONS: 1) Schizophrenic patients clearly showed direct and simple forms of thinking and expressive language, lacking reasoning, and systematic processing. Additionally, schizophrenic patients simply responded to the whole and used concrete and direct expression. 2) Replication study is warranted to improve reliability and validity of the tool we developed. Research on individual differences needs to be conducted to measure differences among individuals and change over time in an individual. 3) Further study on the factors which might be related to forms of thinking and language expressions, such as intelligence is warranted.