A breakdown of event schemas in patients with schizophrenia: an examination of their script for dining at restaurants

Event schemas, the conceptualization of past experience, in schizophrenic p atients were examined based upon script theory. Forty schizophrenic patient s and 40 age- and education-matched normal control subjects participated in this study. This experiment consisted of three tasks. In the recall task, subjects recalled a typical scenario of going to a formal restaurant. In th e frequency judgment task, subjects determined whether the given events hap pen frequently, occasionally or rarely in a restaurant. In the sequencing t ask, the subjects put the randomly presented events in the correct order. T he responses of the schizophrenic patients in the recall task, when compare d with those of the normal control subjects, had significantly fewer concep ts and a greater proportion of highest-frequency concepts. In addition, the sequence of their responses was less accurate than that of normal individu als. This abnormality is unlikely due primarily to a retrieval deficit (i.e . generating fewer concepts in the recall task) given that their performanc es on the frequency judgment and sequencing tasks, tasks that require less retrieval effort, were consistent with those of the recall task. These resu lts suggest that event schemas in schizophrenic patients contain little det ailed information and are incoherent in organization. (C) 1999 Elsevier Sci ence Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.