"thinking became increasingly contaminated"

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What is meant by this phrase? I was looking at something the school psychologist had written about me when I was in 3rd grade (elementary school). Here's the context:

"[beneficii] tended to focus his attention on extraneous information that was significant only to him. Perseveration in his thought processes limited his ability to respond to socially relevant information. As structure decreased, his tangential thinking increased, and thinking became increasingly contaminated."

it means you concentrate on what is important to you rather than what makes you look good in the eyes of others. Apparently, in the world of NTs, that's akin to mortal sin.

That's what contamination of thought refers to? I'm skeptical, to be honest.

Considering the first part of the sentence, referring to tangential thinking, it seems the contamination is supposed to refer to disorganized thinking somehow.

In fact, the reason why I was interested in this is due to the word contamination. The only place I've seen in psychiatric literature that refers to contamination is when it comes to the Rorschach. It's apparently a sign of disorganization where you kinda fuse 2 things that shouldn't be fused, showing that you have problems comprehending object boundaries. Of the various thought disorder measures, contamination is apparently one that is a sign of pathology, even in children. It's considered to be specific to schizophrenia.

Now, I don't think I had schizophrenia, and the evidence suggests I didn't, even with the psychotic episode at 14 (that was likely a brief reactive psychosis or delusional disorder or perhaps psychosis NOS). Contamination as used by the psychologist who evaluated me is probably referring to something else, but I wonder, What?

I had to look up tangential thinking. It led me to a Wikipedia article that talks about various types of formal thought disorders such as echolalia, illogicality, stilted speech, neologisms, incoherence (word salad), etc. Fascinating stuff. The article specifically mentioned that it does exist with schizophrenics as well as us spectrumites.

It's interesting now to look at some of the entries on WP that really make no sense. I see arguments, fights and confusions erupt because Poster A didn't fully understand what Poster B meant. Poster C spoke in tongues so his meanings were unclear and Poster D was so vague that their writing simply didn't fit the topic or thread. Interesting stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_disorder

My first reaction to the post was 'oh, it's Chomsky's transformational grammar' and I think I was miles off.

I'd kind of agree with Leafplant. I'd also say that - this is talking about your thinking being clouded by your intrinsic value-system (what makes sense in your private world) versus what you recognise as being extrinsically valued (the outside world). In other words, you haven't come into the outside world through your communication as much as is socially acceptable.

On one hand - that's an arrogant comment. On another - communication is supposed to be a two-way street, rather than a means of self-expression. I wouldn't take the comment personally.

I've met a few ed psychs. They're funny buggers. One started mirroring me, just for a laugh, not knowing I could do all that stuff when he was in nappies, and I didn't need a book to teach me that. Twonk... I always felt uncomfortable around him.

Also, don't forget, they have to talk in their language to 'seem important'. Like a dustman becomes a extraneous waste operative. OP, I would let it go.

Last edited by octobertiger on 24 Oct 2013, 11:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

It means you lived in your own world, and as the external world became less structured you retreated further and made less sense to those around you. Pretty common for someone on the spectrum.

Maybe you were having dirty thoughts? hehe

just kidding.

It's clear that because you weren't thinking the way he thought you should think that he chose to regard it as contaminated.

I'm not a psych, but,
I would tend to think, in the context of the paragraph, that you could finish that sentence off with...
"...and thinking became increasingly contaminated with perseverative, socially irrelevant information."
Overall it seems to mean that at the time you were not responding to any information not relevant to you, and this became more prominent when there was less structure for you to hang your thoughts on.
With this theory I am not considering the word 'contamination' as a specific jargon word.
Just a theory.

and just look how many ways of saying the same thing we found in this thread!

I would suggest you make a study of pack psychology and have a think as to how that may apply in social situations and you will then maybe understand why you are sometimes called to task by people when all you are doing is minding your own business

This doesn't sound right to me. What I'm mentioning came from testing by the school psychologist at the time, when I was undergoing a personality assessment.

Basically, if I didn't see what the info had to do with me, then I ignored it and continued on with stuff that did have to do with me?

Also, for more context there's this from the behavioral observations section:

"His thinking tended to be tangential, and confusion within his own thought processes was apparent. [beneficii] also struggled to interpret social information, and his perceptions reflected considerable confusion."

It seems from this that I met the MCDD criterion for perplexity and easy confusability.

I did read these off to the psychiatrist who gave me my second opinion on a separate appointment, and he thought most of it was typical ASD. Some of it he thought might be closer to schizophrenia, but overall the general pattern fits within ASD.

"In the chapter on contaminated thinking, Kleiger also discusses a range of severity. He indicates that Contaminations can be classified as verbal (e.g., “bug-ox”; “pig-people”, where a person sees a bug and an ox, or a pig and people, in the very same area, and fuses the percept); perceptual, such as the simultaneous presence of two incompatible views of the same object; conceptual, based on “the merging or simultaneity of conceptual categories (without perceptual fusion or verbal condensation” (p. 214).

Kleiger indicates that contaminations have typically been viewed as a pathognomonic sign of schizophrenia, but that in the examination of the literature contaminations occurred in only about 16 percent of the schizophrenics. Although contaminations are extremely rare, and have low diagnostic sensitivity, they have high specificity. Contamination responses typically yield a false positive rate for diagnosis of schizophrenia of less than one percent, but a false negative rate for the diagnosis of schizophrenia of about 85 percent. "

http://www.apadivisions.org/division-39 ... dered.aspx

Sarah81,

I wonder if I could see an example of "the merging or simultaneity of conceptual categories."

It is very obscure isn't it.. You would probably have to read the whole book.