Abstract

This study examined whether positive symptoms of schizophrenia reflect a loss of cognitive processing control and negative symptoms whether restriction in cognitive Processing. The main purpose of Experiment I was to gather normative data from young adult generated script for routine daily activities. In Experiment II compared normal young adults, schizophrenic patients' with positive symptoms and those with negative symptoms in recall and recognition. The prevailing view was examined by analysing the ability to use general world knowledge in comprehension and inference. The result showed that (a) normal young adult displayed results similar to previous research (b) positive symptom schizophrenics as well as negative symptom schizophrenics showed cognitive restriction (c) positive symptom group reflect a loss of cognitive control but knowledge based on conventional activities were represented on a similar level. Especially the independent processing of the positive symptom and negative symptom was discussed.