Investigators compared the emotional adjustment, intellectual functioning, scholastic performance, and social behavior of 54 children who became schizophrenic mental patients with that of 143 matched controls. The following conclusions were drawn: indications of potential schizophrenia include behavioral and emotional deviation in childhood, death of one's parent during childhood, serious organic handicap, declining mathematical ability in adolescence, and family conflict; behavioral deviations of preschizophrenics were obvious enough that teachers commented on them spontaneously in cumulative school records; behavioral differences did not appear prominently until adolescence; and behavioral deviations in preschizphrenic boys and girls differed as did their patterns of change. There was little evidence of either alienation or reversal in sex role adjustments for either gender. The preschizophrenics achieved lower overall I. Q. scores, but they did not differ from their own siblings in intelligence. Since patterns of mathematical deviancy were the same for boys and girls, it was concluded that a deficiency in mathematical skill was prodromal for both genders of the cognitive disruption that often characterize schizophrenics. (Author/GW)