Many researchers agree that information processing approach is helpful in describing and explaining contemporary issues relevant to abnormalities in schizophrenic thought disorder. Bleuler(1924) and Kraepelin(1913) make an early attempt to
delineate the
type of information processing that malfunctions in schizophrenic disorder. There is a rapid advances in information processing models of normal human cognition. One form of information-processing paradigm is the multi-store model. Incoming
information
has been assumed to proceed through a sequence of informationprocessing stages in this paradigm. But more recent models have increasingly emphasized flexibility in control of processing and rejected a strict, fixed sequence of stages. For
example,
in
resource-allocation model, attention is conceived as a limited nonspecific capacity or resource that can be allocated to specific processing tasks. An increased role of simultaneous or parallel processing is incorporated into this model, It is
postulated that certain processes demand little or no processing capacity for completion but certain other processes demand considerable processing capacity. Schneider and Shiffrin(1977) propose the distinction between automatic and Controlled
processes
are attention-demanding, usually serial in nature, relatively slow and are subject to interference by other simultaneous controlled processing. Serial comparison and rehearsal are examples of controlled processes. Automatic processes do not
demand
resource and are parallel in nature, relatively fast. This processes do not interfere with other simultaneous processing, but are difficult to suppress or modify. The encoding of very familiar letters or numbers to the recognition level is
usually
automatic.
Studies of information processing in schizophrenia have typically attempted to identify a specific dysfunctional processing stage. However, little studies have attempted to clarify resource-allocation processing in schizophrenia. Some researcher
processing that schizophrenic patients' cognitive deficits reflect an abnormal controlled processing. But their criteria of controlled processing are inadequate. There are some suggestions of automatic processing failure in schizophrenia. For
example,
schizophrenics fail to engage a preattentive process and thus fail to group stimuli as an perceptual object by global, wholistic analysis. So that activity must proceed at a level of controlled processing by serial, detailed analysis. Disruption
of
automatic processing abilities requires that resource-demanding controlled processing be used to carry out processing mormally accompiished through resource-free automatic operation, which results in a reduction in available remaining processing
resources. So controlled processing deficit in schizophrenics may be due to automatic processing deficit. In this revew, the author emphasize the importance of automatic processing study in schizophrenia for further research.
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