Distortion in paranoid schizophrenia

Subjects of this study were 27 paranoid schizophrenics and 27 normals. Each subject read 4 short stories describing hypothetical people and also a word-selection checklist. After reading each story, the subject did a motor task for 5 minutes. He was then asked to check all the words on the list he would use to describe the person in the story he had read. "Distortion" (the checking of a word which was inconsistent with the given trait pattern of a story) was significantly greater in the schizophrenic group and more variable than in the normal group.