ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the background and results of Robert W. Payne investigations into the aspect of cognitive abnormality. He has chosen to examine a number of the crucial areas of disorder of cognition, and much of his work has been devoted to the exploration of overinclusive disorders of conceptualization. "Overinclusive thinking" may be the result of a disorder of the process whereby "inhibition" is built up to "circumscribe" and "define" the learned response. The neurotic group was further subdivided into twelve "dysthymics", suffering mainly from obsessional and anxiety disorder, and eight "hysterics" who had such disorders as fugue state, psychopathic tendencies, and the like. The schizophrenic subjects were expected to perform at a slow speed on these measures because overinclusive thought disorder is presumed to increase the complexity of simple tasks. Schizophrenics, as compared with neurotic patients, cannot be regarded as "concrete" in the sense of being inflexible or of being unable to generalize at all.
