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The British Journal of Psychiatry 128: 50-56 (1976)
© 1976 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

A comparative study of attentional strategies of schizophrenic and highly creative normal subjects

M Dykes and A McGhie

Frequent references have been made to the similarities between highly creative and psychotic thinking. This study attempts to test the hypothesis that one explanation for such a correspondence lies in the fact that individuals in both these populations habitually employ common attentional strategies which cause them to sample an unusually wide range of available environmental stimuli. A group of highly creative adults and a group of equally intelligent but low creative adults were compared with a group of acute non-paranoid schizophrenic adults on three tests designed to assess attentional and other cognitive styles. The results offer support to the view that both highly creative and schizophrenic individuals habitually sample a wider range of available environmental input than do less creative individuals. In the case of the schizophrenic this involuntary widening of attention tends to have a deleterious effect on performance, while, in contrast, the highly creative individual is more able to successfully process the greater input without this incurring a performance deficit.


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 Schizophr BullHome page
B. Nelson and D. Rawlings
Relating Schizotypy and Personality to the Phenomenology of Creativity
Schizophr Bull, August 4, 2008; (2008) sbn098v1.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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Copyright © 1976 The Royal College of Psychiatrists.