Cognitive and Linguistic Deficits in Psychotic Children

Psychotic children were compared to normal Ss on performance in several tasks hypothesized to involve language mediation: discrimination learning, transposition, reversal discrimination, and short-term memory (STM). Verbal labeling was employed as a variable in the STM task. Psychotic Ss performed worse than normals on all measures. The results were interpreted in relation to the language deficits of the psychotic Ss. The finding that psychotics who had at least semifunctional language abilities were able to profit from verbal labeling in STM suggests that one locus of deficiency in these Ss is in the production and utilization of internal verbal cues.