Referent communication of chronic schizophrenics and chronic alcoholics under simultaneous and successive task presentation.

Sixteen chronic schizophrenics and 16 chronic alcoholics were presented pairs of colors with the instruction to describe one of them (referent) so that an unknown listener could distinguish the referent from the other color (nonreferent). In one experimental condition patients were asked to name the nonreferent before they were instructed to describe the referent (successive presentation). In the other condition a parallel set of display colors was presented simultaneously with the instruction to describe the referent. Both groups of patients communicated equally well under both modes of presentation. In both groups communication accuracy decreased while response latency and references to the nonreferent increased, the more difficult the colors were to discriminate. Schizophrenics, but not alcoholics, referred more often to both the colors in a display if the successive mode of presentation was administered before the simultaneous mode. They showed a steeper slope of utterance length across levels of difficulty than the alcoholics. In the schizophrenic group, the degree of general psychopathology as well as paranoid and anergic tendencies correlated negatively with communication accuracy, utterance length, and the number of descriptions referring to both colors of an item in the simultaneous presentation condition. Results were discussed with respect to earlier work with Cohen's (1978a) referent communication task.