Percept assimilation and paranoid severity.

Abstract

INCREASED attention has recently been given to cognitive performance in paranoid individuals. 1-4 The existence of delusional or false beliefs in people who have relatively intact intellectual and perceptual equipment invites inquiry into the intermediate steps which lead from informational input to hypothesis-formation or, rejection. McReynolds has offered an interesting model for one aspect of the process of delusion-formation in his theory of percepts. 5 According to this theory, anxiety is a function of the magnitude of unassimilated percepts, and the perceptual process itself is governed by the economic principle of keeping anxiety to a minimum. It might be added that a percept is assimilated when it is judged to be a confirming instance of a belief or hypothesis. The belief in turn aspires to internal consistency with the individual's total belief system. In this scheme, delusional beliefs are formed to reduce anxiety. They do