Inter-Relationships among Three Measures of Disordered Thinking in Continuous Word Association

Abstract

This report investigated the inter-relationships among three word-association indices (response commonality, degree of logical relatedness, and idiosyncratic responses) for a continuous word-association test to examine continuous-association procedures as a technique for studying associative thought disorder in schizophrenia. Results indicated high intercorrelations among all measures for both schizophrenics (n = 42) and nonschizophrenic psychiatric controls (n = 30). These data provide evidence in support of the utility of the continuous word-association test as an instrument capable of assessing associative disturbance in schizophrenia in a manner similar to the more familiar single word-association test.