Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T13:25:25.722Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dichotic listening and allusive thinking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

M. S. Armstrong ,
A. P. Blaszczynski  and
N. McConaghy
M. S. Armstrong*
Affiliation:
New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry, The Prince of Wales Hospital, and The School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales
A. P. Blaszczynski
Affiliation:
New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry, The Prince of Wales Hospital, and The School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales
N. McConaghy
Affiliation:
New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry, The Prince of Wales Hospital, and The School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr M. S. Armstrong, Psychiatric Unit, Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, N.S.W. 2031, Australia.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

Previous work suggests that allusive thinkers have a broader attentional process associated with weak central inhibition. The method of dichotic stimulation was used to investigate this concept. Sixty-three university students completed a battery of tests including 2 dichotic listening tasks. The Object Sorting Test was used as a measure of allusive thinking.

Allusive thinkers showed a trend towards impaired shadowing performance. Mislabelling of shadow as distractor words and vice versa, on recall and recognition tasks, showed the strongest correlation with allusive thinking. Such mislabelling was considered to reflect impaired discrimination learning, and provides further support for a hypothesis relating allusive thinking to weak Pavlovian central inhibition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , February 1978 , pp. 111 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Armstrong, M. S. & McConaghy, N. (1977). Allusive thinking, the Word Halo, and verbosity. Psychological Medicine 7, 439–445.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barr, R. F. & McConaghy, N. (1972). Conditioning in relation to conceptual thinking. British Journal of Psychiatry 121, 299–310.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Broadbent, D. E. (1970). Stimulus set and response set: two kinds of selective attention. In Attention: Contemporary Theories and Analysis (ed. Mostofsky, D.), pp. 51–60. Appleton-Century-Crofts: New York.Google Scholar
Dykes, M. & McGhie, A. (1976). A comparative study of attentional strategies of schizophrenic and highly creative normal subjects. British Journal of Psychiatry 128, 50–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harrow, M., Himmelhoch, J., Tucker, G., Hersh, J. & Quinlan, D. (1972). Overinclusive thinking in acute schizophrenic patients. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 79, 161–168.Google ScholarPubMed
Lovibond, S. H. (1954). The object sorting test and conceptual thinking in schizophrenia. Australian Journal of Psychology 6, 52–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lovibond, S. H. (1966). Interim Manual for the Object Sorting Scales. Australian Council for Educational Research: Melbourne.Google Scholar
McConaghy, N. (1960). Modes of abstract thinking and psychosis. American Journal of Psychiatry 117, 106–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McConaghy, N. (1961). The measurement of an inhibitory process in human higher nervous activity: its relation to allusive thinking and fatigue. American Journal of Psychiatry 118, 125–132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McConaghy, N. (1974). Allusive thinking and the ocular angle alpha. In Essays on Schizophrenia Essay no. 7. Ethnor Ltd: Sydney.Google Scholar
McConaghy, N. & Clancy, M. (1968). Familial relationships of allusive thinking in university students and their parents. British Journal of Psychiatry 114, 1079–1087.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moon, A. F., Mefferd, R. B. Jr, Wieland, B. A., Pokorny, A. D. & Falconer, G. A. (1968). Perceptual dysfunction as a determinant of schizophrenic word associations. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 146, 80–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moray, N. (1959). Attention in dichotic listening: affective cues and the influence of instructions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 11, 56–60.Google Scholar
Nie, N. H., Hull, C. H., Jenkins, J. G., Steinbrenner, K. & Bent, D. H. (1975). Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. McGraw-Hill: New York.Google Scholar
Paivio, A., Yuille, J. C. & Madigan, S. A. (1968). Concreteness, imagery, and meaningfullness values for 925 nouns. Journal of Experimental Psychology Monograph Supplement, 76, no. 1, part 2, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Payne, R. (1973). Cognitive abnormalities. In Handbook of Abnormal Psychology (ed. Eysenck, H. J.), pp. 420–483. Pitman: London.Google Scholar
Payne, R. & Friedlander, D. (1962). A short battery of simple tests for measuring overinclusive thinking. Journal of Mental Science 108, 362–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Payne, R., Matussek, P. & George, E. I. (1959). An experimental study of schizophrenic thought disorder. Journal of Mental Science 105, 627–652.Google Scholar
Payne, R., Hochberg, A. C. & Hawks, D. V. (1970). Dichotic stimulation as a method of assessing the disorder of attention in overinclusive schizophrenic patients. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 76, 185–193.Google Scholar
Quinn, P. T. (1972). Stuttering: cerebral dominance and the dichotic word test. Medical Journal of Australia 2, 639–643.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn, P. T. (1975). The investigation of neurological factors in stutterers. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of New South Wales.Google Scholar
Rosman, B., Wild, C., Ricci, J., Fleck, S. & Lidz, T. (1964). Thought disorder in the parents of schizophrenic patients: a further study utilizing the object sorting test. Journal of Psychiatric Research 2, 211–221.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thorndike, E. L. & Lorge, I. (1944). The Teacher's Wordbook of 30000 Words. Teachers College, Bureau of Publications: New York.Google Scholar
Treisman, A. M. (1960). Contextual cues in selective listening. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 12, 242–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, P. K. (1977). Allusive thinking and creativity in high school students. Unpublished B.Sc (Med.) thesis, University of New South Wales.Google Scholar
Wallach, M. A. & Kogan, N. (1965). Modes of Thinking in Young Children: A Study of the Creativity-Intelligence Distinction. Holt, Rinehart and Winston: New York.Google Scholar
Wishner, J. & Wahl, O. (1974). Dichotic listening in schizophrenia. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 42, 538–546.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed