Selective reinforcement of schizophrenics' interview responses

In this experiment each of five examiners tested and interviewed four subjects in each of three conditions. The subjects were 60 male, hospitalized schizophrenics. The three conditions were the reinforcement, after an operant period, of “sick talk”, “healthy talk”, or plural nouns during a structured interview. Half the Welsh factor A and R scale items were administered before the interview, half after the interview. Significant differences were found among experimental conditions in terms of changes from operant to reinforced interview periods in percentage of “sick talk” emitted by subjects and changes from pre- to post-testing in terms of Welsh R scores. The correlation between these two measures of change was statistically significant. The results were discussed in terms of the different therapeutic strategies of neoanalytic and behaviour therapists.