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Cognitive Slippage

Cognitive slippage describes a disordered thought process in which links between items becomes unclear and trains of thought are disorganized. It is a symptom of several psychiatric diseases and mental disorders associated with cognition and formal thought disorders. Cognitive Slippage more common in individuals with a higher predisposition for Schizophrenia. It is not associated with a lower level of intelligence and the speech usually remains grammatically correct. Cognitive Slippage is manifested in patterns of speech, where categories and lists become overly broad as concepts unrelated at first glance become related through tangential connections.

An example of cognitive slippage might be as follows:

"List some types of cars."

"Let's see, there's Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, Japan, Rising Sun, Hiroshima, Atomic Bomb, Enola Gay, oh and Miata."

The inclusion of extraneous items in the listing is evidence of the cognitive slippage. While the concepts such as Toyota, Japan, Rising Sun, etc. are all related, the relation is no longer defined by the initial prompt. The cognitive slippage, however, causes the inability to disregard these extraneous connections and results in patterns of speech and association as seen here. In contrast, another disorder of speech, word salad is even more disorganized than the loose associations of cognitive slippage. Cognitive Slippage can cause speech to be confusing to a listener.

Measurement

Cognitive Slippage is often measured through the Cognitive Slippage Scale (CSS), a 35 question test created by Miers and Raulin. Th presence of cognitive slippage is indicate by receiving a high score on this test. The test has been shown to be applicable and accurate to both clinical and nonclininal populations.

Examples of questions on this test are "Often when I am talking I feel that I am not making sense" and "Sometimes my thoughts just disappear."

It can be used alongside other tests to measure "psychosis proneness", or how vulnerable an individual is to developing schizophrenia or related disorders.

Cognitive Slippage, Schizotypy, and Schizophrenia

Cognitive slippage exists on a continuum from high to low levels and can be found in individuals with and without schizophrenia. However, high scores on the Cognitive Slippage Scale (CSS) have been shown to suggest an increased likelihood of an individual developing schizophrenia. Preliminary research also suggests that first-degree relatives of individuals with schizophrenia also score higher on the CSS than people with no first-degree relation to someone with schizophrenia.

Schizotypy is used to define the continuum of personality characteristics that are vulnerable to developing schizophrenia. It was originally characterized by four main signs, one of which was cognitive slippage. Later the definition was narrowed to focus on two specific characteristics that were associated with increased likelihood of schizophrenia development: cognitive slippage and interpersonal aversiveness.

Magical Ideation, Social Anhedonia, and Interpersonal Aversiveness are other symptoms that are often tested alongside cognitive slippage in order to asses vulnerability of an individual developing schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders.

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RAW MATERIAL BELOW

Relation to other Schitzotypic Characteristics

Magical Ideation, Social Anhedonia, and Interpersonal Aversiveness are among other symptoms that are often tested alongside cognitive slippage in order to asses vulnerability of an individual developing schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders.

Magical Ideation

Cognitive Slippage is often tested in conjunction with tests to determine levels of magical ideation as they have been shown to be related in being predictors of certain types of schizotypy.

Social Anhedonia

Social Anhedonia is . The two symptoms are often tested alongside one another as vulnerability indicators for schizophrenia, with social Anhedonia often being measured through the Revised Social Anhedonia Scale (SocAnh).

Interpersonal Aversiveness

Interpersonal Aversiveness is identified by Paul Meehl as one of the main signs of schizotypy alongside cognitive slippage.

Raw Material

"All participants were tested individually. The participants were administered the Cognitive Slippage Scale (CSS; Miers and Raulin, 1987). The CSS is a 35-item, true-false self-report measure designed by Miers and Raulin. The CSS has good psychometric properties, such as high internal consistency reliability (.87 for male and .90 for female subjects; Miers and Raulin, 1987). Although the scale was originally developed on undergraduate students, it was de- signed to identify schizotypic characteristics such as speech deficits and confused thinking. Subsequent studies (cf. Osman et al., 1992) indicate that it has good test-retest reliability in both clinical (schizophrenia patients) and nonclinical populations.The CSS contains items related to the ability to keep track of one’s thoughts and the reporting of speech deficits and/or confused thinking. It appears that the CSS taps both positive and negative aspects of thought disorder. Several items in the CSS assess incoherence (“Often when I am talking I feel that I am not making sense”; keyed true), derailment (“I have no difficulty in controlling my thoughts”; keyed false), and disorganization (“My thoughts are orderly most of the time”; keyed false), whereas some of the items tap processes such as blocking (“Sometimes my thoughts just disappear”; keyed true), poverty of content of speech (“I think I am reasonably good at communicating my ideas to other people”; keyed false), and alogia (“There have been times when I have gone an entire day or longer without speaking”; keyed true). Eighteen of the scale items are reverse coded (negatively keyed) to control for acquiescent response bias. High scores on the CSS scale indicate the presence of cognitive slippage."

"According to Meehl, defective control over one’s associations is one manifestation of the underlying integrative neural defect (schizotaxia) that characterizes individuals with a heightened liability for the development of schizophrenia (Meehl, 1962, 1990, 2001). Cognitive slippage, believed to be the mildest form of such thought disorder, is characterized by abnormal associations and an inability to keep track of one’s thoughts (Kagan and Oltmanns, 1981; Levine et al., 1996). Thus, cognitive slippage should be observed more frequently in schizotypal individuals than in normal controls." 

"Miller and Chapman (1983) found that individuals with high scores on the Perceptual Aberration Scale, Magical Ideation, and the Impulsive Nonconformity Scales (Chapman et al., 1984) were more likely to display deviant performance on measures of cognitive slippage." 

"Gooding and colleagues have also shown that the dimension of cognitive slippage, a mild form of thought disorder characterized by abnormal thought associations and thought monitoring, is important in schizotypy and relates to magical ideation "

"Clinically, we see a degree of cognitive slippage not found to a comparable degree among nonschizo- phrenic persons. Some patients (e.g., pseudoneu- rotics) are highly anxious and exhibit minimal slippage; others (e.g., burnt-out cases) are min- imally anxious with marked slippage.  "..."develop the four schizotypal source traits: cognitive slippage, anhedonia, ambivalence, and interpersonal aversive- ness? "...

"One does not attempt to derive all of the social malcommunication directly from the schizotaxic"cognitive slippage." The process of social learning leads to impaired consensual validation and to aberrations in verbal and gestural communication of the sort emphasized by psychodynamic and family theorists. But what gets this social process rolling initially is the combination of affective scrambling, aversive drift, and cognitive slippage as parametric features of the molar acquisition functions, and these arise from the schizotaxic defect."..."diverse molar psychisms(perceptual-cognitive,semantic, motivational, and affective). These aberrations are consid¬ ered to flow from the primary "synaptic slippage," although not equally closely or in the same way; in that sense they all stem from Bleuler's core defect, "associative loosening." The imposition of mixed social reinforcement schedules on these dispositions results in a schizotypal personality structure. Core features of this personality include interpersonal alienation, ambivalence, dereism, autism, cognitive slippage, and aversive drift. The great majority of schizotypes remain free of diagnosable mental disorder, but a minority (around 10%) develop schizophrenia."  

"One study has reported that people with high scores on the CSS (elevated disorganized schizotypy) exhibited higher communication disturbances, poorer performance on a working memory task, and higher scores on the SAS than control participants (Kerns & Becker, 2008)." 

"Using Meehl's description, a series of ‘psychosis proneness’ scales have been developed to measure the symptoms and traits that char- acterize the schizotypy condition. These measures include the Magical Ideation, Perceptual Aberration, Physical Anhedonia, Social Anhedonia, Nonconformity Impulsivity, Cognitive Slippage, and Schizotypal Ambiva- lence Scales (see review in Kelley & Coursey, 1992). These scales consist of self-report, true-false questionnaires. "

"The Validity of Psychosis Proneness Scales as Vulnerability Indicators in Recent-Onset Schizophrenia Patients", vulnerability indicators