Skip Navigation


Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access originally published online on December 9, 2005
Schizophrenia Bulletin 2006 32(2):327-331; doi:10.1093/schbul/sbj034
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
32/2/327    most recent
sbj034v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Moritz, S.
Right arrow Articles by Hausmann, D.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Moritz, S.
Right arrow Articles by Hausmann, D.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Incautious Reasoning as a Pathogenetic Factor for the Development of Psychotic Symptoms in Schizophrenia

Steffen Moritz1,2, Todd S Woodward3,4, and Daniel Hausmann5
2 Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
3 Department of Research, Riverview Hospital, Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
4 Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
5 Department of Psychology, General Psychology (Cognition), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

1To whom correspondence should be addressed; e-mail: moritz{at}uke.uni-hamburg.de.

Previous studies indicate that schizophrenia patients draw decisions more hastily than controls. The aim of the present study was to obtain convergent evidence with a new paradigm, designed after the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire television game show. Thirty-two schizophrenia patients and 38 healthy subjects were administered 20 knowledge questions, along with 4 response alternatives. Participants were required to provide probability estimates for each alternative. Whenever a subject was confident that one of the alternatives was correct or was wrong, the subject was asked to indicate this via a decision or rejection rating. Thus, probability estimates and decisions were independently assessed, allowing determination of the point at which probability estimates translate into decisions. Patients and controls gave comparable probability estimates for all alternatives. However, patients committed more erroneous responses, owing to their making decisions in the face of low subjective probability ratings and rejecting alternatives despite rather high probability ratings. The results provide further evidence for the claim that schizophrenia patients make strong judgments based on little information. We propose that a lowered threshold for accepting alternatives provides a parsimonious explanation for the data-gathering bias reported in the literature.

Keywords: delusion / decision-making / probability threshold


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.