An information processing model for schizophrenia.

A disorder of information processing must be present for a person to receive the diagnosis of schizophrenia, and is present when schizophrenic symptoms occur along with other diseases. We created a model for this disorder that resolves some paradoxic findings and suggests directions for future study. Basically, schizophrenics have a deficiency in information processing that can be characterized as conscious, serial, and limited in channel capacity. In contrast, those processes that seem automatic, unconscious, parallel, and almost unlimited in capacity seem to be normal or supernormal.