Overinclusive Thinking in Mania and Schizophrenia

Abstract

Beginning with the work of Cameron (1944), the concept of overinclusive thinking has been used to describe or account for the thought disorder observed in schizophrenic patients. This is usually defined as an inability to preserve conceptual boundaries, perhaps based on a cerebral input dysfunction which causes difficulty in filtering stimuli (Payne et al. , 1959; McGhie, 1970; Epstein, 1953; Broadbent, 1958). This leads the schizophrenic to make remote associations and to overgeneralize or overabstract.