Schizophrenic responses to the Proverbs Test: abstract, concrete, or autistic?

CONCRETE, OR AUTISTIC? ALGIMANTAS M. SHIMKUNAS, MALCOLM D. GYNTHER, AND KATHLEEN SMITH Washington University School of Medicine Psychopathology was more effective in predicting autistic responses to proverbs of acutely ill schizophrenic patients than was intelligence as measured by the Wechsler Vocabulary subtest. Autistic responses decreased significantly from preto post-S wk. of hospital treatment. There was no difference in the frequency of these responses between high and low verbal IQ groups, nor did level of IQ affect the decrease in autistic responses. These findings were contrasted with those of a previous study which showed that the traditional abstract and concrete scores of responses to proverbs were highly correlated with intelligence even with the effects of pathology statistically controlled, and did not improve with treatment except when IQ was above average. The present study further demonstrated that while autistic responses were negatively related to abstract scores, they were relatively unrelated to concrete scores. The overall findings were consistent with both earlier theoretical formulations and more recent empirical investigations regarding cognitive deficit in schizophrenia. A recent study by Shimkunas, Gynther, and Smith (1966) demonstrated that concrete or literal interpretations of proverbs are poor predictors of psychopathology in schizophrenia. The findings cast doubt on the ability of proverbs to assess the purported loss of abstracting function in the thought disorder. These investigators found that intelligence, rather than degree of illness, was the primary correlate of both abstractness and concreteness in proverb responses. Furthermore, the study showed that only patients having average through superior IQs improved in abstracting ability over several weeks of hospital treatment, while patients with below average intelligence did not change on this