Abstract
The present study was designed to investigate the impairment of communication processes in schizophrenics from the viewpoint of co-operativeness in group manual dexterity tasks.
Subiects were 16 schizophrenic patients and 16 normal controls age- and sex-matched to the patients. The task was to trace a round figure in co-operation with the experimenter as quickly and as accurately as possible. The performance was judged on speed (time for a round) and errors (frequency of the pencil's slipping).
Results were summarized as follows :
1) The speed scores of the schizophrenic group were significantly lower than that of normal group through the five trials.
2) The error scores of the schizophrenic group were significantly higher than that of normal group thorugh the fivet rials.
These results suggested that the schizophrenics were less co-operative than the normal subjects.
