Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2006 Nov;20(6):685-699.
doi: 10.1037/0894-4105.20.6.685.

A new dissimilarity measure for finding semantic structure in category fluency data with implications for understanding memory organization in schizophrenia

Affiliations
Free article

A new dissimilarity measure for finding semantic structure in category fluency data with implications for understanding memory organization in schizophrenia

Tony J Prescott et al. Neuropsychology. 2006 Nov.
Free article

Erratum in

  • Neuropsychology. 2007 Mar;21(2):273

Abstract

The ordering of words in category fluency lists is indicative of the semantic distance between items in conceptual memory. Several studies have concluded from structural analyses of such data, using cluster analysis or multidimensional scaling, that the semantic memory of patients with schizophrenia is more disorganized than that of controls. Previous studies have based their analyses on a measure of average interitem dissimilarity devised by A. S. Chan et al. (1993). Here the authors derive a new and improved method of determining dissimilarity and show that when this measure is applied to the fluency lists of patients with schizophrenia, the average pattern of organization for the animal category has similar structure to that of controls, but with greater variability between individuals.

PubMed Disclaimer

Publication types

Substances