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Instead of examining the performance of schizophrenic patients in tasks involving the perception of sentences, as earlier workers did, the authors attempted to use individual words as stimuli in a series of tests of speech perception in three groups: paranoid schizophrenics, nonparanoid schizophrenics, and a normal control group. They first tested the mean auditory thresholds for these groups and found no significant differences, concluding that any differences in speech perception subsequently found between the groups could not be attributed to differences in auditory acuity. This was a little surprising in view of previous findings that schizophrenics have raised auditory thresholds. In comparing speech perception, the authors found no significant difference between the scores of the schizophrenic groups and the control group on their list of 'phonetically balanced words at the initial 80 decibel level', although the score for the control group was higher. However, the control group did perform significantly better than the schizophrenic groups when filtered speech tones were used. This was particularly so at low rather than high intensities. From their conclusion that schizophrenics do have impaired speech perception in comparison with the control group, the authors suggest that various reports of schizophrenic impairment in many areas (e.g., 'on information processing tasks, learning tasks and short term memory') should be reconsidered from the point of view that the impairment may be in the perception of the spoken material.