Transformational deficits in cognition of schizophrenic children.

Doctors watched a small group of children who had been called schizophrenic. They gave Piaget tasks like pouring water and hiding objects. They wanted to see if the kids could think in concrete or formal ways.

The team also checked if living in a hospital changed scores. They tracked the same kids into their mid-teens.

None of the children reached formal operations. Very few even mastered basic concrete operations. The gaps stayed the same no matter how long they lived in care.

In short, the thinking problems were deep and stable.

Pitetti et al. (2007) looked at adults with the same label and found normal WAIS-R IQ scores. This seems like a clash, but the 2007 group was older and used a different test. Early Piaget tasks may catch delays that later IQ tests miss.

Rumsey (1985) showed that even highly verbal autistic adults fail card-sorting tasks. Both papers point to stubborn executive problems across diagnoses.

de Freitas Feldberg et al. (2021) and Wilson et al. (2023) found large math and memory gaps in kids with cerebral palsy. Together these studies warn us: many neuro-developmental labels carry hidden learning traps that plain IQ can hide.

If you work with teens who carry a schizophrenia history, do not trust a normal IQ score alone. Add quick Piaget-style checks like conservation or perspective-taking tasks. When the teen fails, break lessons into small concrete steps and use visuals. This low-tech probe can save years of wrong academic placement.