A comparison of cognitive development in normal and psychotic children in the first two years of life from home movies.

Through the use of an unusual data base--home movies made by parents of the infancies and early childhood of their children who later developed a form of childhood psychosis and a control group of equal number who developed normally--the investigators studied the intellectual development of these children. Behaviors indexing Piaget's sensorimotor stages were recorded for both the index and control groups. The findings show several differences between index and control groups. Further, three aberrant cognitive patterns appeared in the sensorimotor behaviors of the subsequently psychotic children. These findings are discussed in relation to specific diagnosis and case history information.