Pair comparisons of musical excerpts. Preference bias of schizophrenics and normals.

Abstract

EXPERIMENTAL and laboratory studies of sensory-motor, perceptual, and cognitive behaviors of schizophrenic patients suggest that they have distinct deficits in maintaining and modulating response set,1,2in attention scanning and focusing,3,5and in associative and integrating functions.6,7The present study assumed that such psychological deficits also exist in the affective behavior of schizophrenics, since associative dyscontrol or cognitive slippage and disturbance in affect are believed to be closely interwoven in schizophrenic psychopathology.8-10Using the time-error paradigm of psychophysics, this study examined affective or preference comparisons of musical selections by schizophrenics and normals in an attempt to clarify the underlying features of schizophrenic affect and to relate these features to the psychological deficits observed in schizophrenics' cognitive and associative behaviors. In a previous work by Koh11with normal subjects, two equally preferred vocal or piano pieces were played in successive order and the subject was instructed to compare the paired excerpts according to his impression