SCHIZOTYPAL THINKING AND ASSOCIATIVE PROCESSING - A RESPONSE COMMONALITY ANALYSIS OF VERBAL FLUENCY

Objective: To determine whether people with high scores for schizotypa l thinking generate more uncommon words in a letter fluency task than people with low scores. Design: Prospective study. Setting: University psychology department. Patients: Forty healthy, right-handed students . Interventions: Students were administered the Magical Ideation (MI) Scale and a 2-minute letter fluency task in which they named as many n ouns as possible beginning with ''A'' or ''F,'' in any order. Outcome measures: Total number of words produced and percentage of unique, rar e and common words (as determined by the responses of the whole group) ; scores on MI scale. Results: Participants with high scores (above th e median) on the MI scale generated as many words as those who had low scores. People in both groups also generated a comparable number of u nique words (named by only I person) and common words (named by 6 or m ore people). As hypothesized, people with high scores on the MI scale generated more rare words (named by fewer than 6 people) than those wi th low scores. Conclusions: These findings support the view of a disin hibition of semantic network functioning as the neuropsychological bas is of creative thought, magical ideation and thought disorder.