Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate positive and negative schizophrenia's cognitive process on prose memory and mental process of comprehension. For schizophrenic patients positive symptoms were related to loss of cognitive processing control, whereas negative symptoms were associated with lowed processing capacity(restriction), two clinical symptoms reflect independent cognitive process. The hypothesis applyied to positive and negative schzophrenia's language disorder. The simple prose were employed in this study. Schizophrenia subject were classified using Andreasen and Olsen's criteria for positive negative and mixed type. Three experiment were conducted with employing various different tasks, In experiment I, a free recall task was given and the amount of free recall analyed. The results did not show significant difference between positive and negative symptom group. This two groups reflect causal recall system deficit. In experiment II, normal, positive and negative schizophrenic subjects were given a question-answering task, with four different questions for positive symptom group severe delayed question-answering latency on implicit no condition than explict yes condition. This result shows a loss of cognitive processing control in positive schzophrenia. In experiment III, a task of free generation of inference was given two analyzing criteria was adapted for protocol analysis. The result of the experiment showed that backward inference was less frequent with positive symptom group than negative symptom group. For forward inference, two groups less frequence than normal subject. The results explained that two group showed manifestation of restriction in cognitive processing. And positive symptom group reflect controlled processing deficit. The implication of the results of the three experiments were to be drawn. The indepent processing of the positive symptom and negative symptom groups was not shown to exist. But Positive symptom group's abnormally functioning cognitive processes conformed.