Abstract

This study was designed to evaluate the loose construing of formal thought-disordered(TD) schizophrenics' personal construct system and to clarify whether their loose construing does occur in a specific construct subsystems, i.e., especially in interpersonal experience areas. For the experimental instruments five different Rep Grids were used, which were consisted in the possible combination of elements(photographs of people, real people, and objects) and constructs(psychological, body-related physical, and object constructs). Split-plot factorial design was used to evaluate the subjects' construct subsystems. The results were that TD schizophrenics were less disordered relative to NTD schizophrenics and normals when using object constructs than when using psychological constructs and body-related physical constructs irrespective of whether photographs of strangers of known people are used as elements to be construed. That is, TD schizophrenics obtained significantly lower construct intensity and element consistency than NTD schzophrenics and normals on Rep Grid employing psychological constructs and body-related physical constructs but not on object constructs. The inconsistency was inferred as a genesis of the schizophrenic formal thought disorder for its possible relations of interpersonal conflict.