Effects of Different Feedback Conditions on the Concept Identification of Schizophrenics

Abstract

This experiment was designed to investigate the effects of and possible interactions between social versus mechanical reinforcement, and reinforcement for right responses only versus reinforcement for wrong responses only on the concept identification performance of chronic schizophrenic patients. A number of writers (Aftleck, 1954; Davies & Harrington, 1957; Whiteman, 1954) have proposed that the presence of social cues elicirs more impairment and disorganization in the performance of various tasks in schizophrenic patients than is the case for normals. Johannsen (1959), however, is apparently the only investigator who has manipulated the amount of social cues in the situation by having Ss perform under conditions of E-present and E-absent. He found that normal Ss learned a simple sequence of pushing right and left positioned buttons more readily under the social condition (E present and verbally indicating both right and wrong) than under the non-social condition (E out of the room and both right and wrong responses indicated mechanically) ; whereas non-paranoid schizophrenic Ss learned more readily under non-social than social conditions. Paranoid schizophrenics learned about as well under both conditions. Atkinson and Robinson (in press) employed mechanical versus social feedback with normal and schizophrenic Ss in a paired-associate learning cask and found no differential effects of this variable. However, E sat close by S even in the mechanical feedback condition so that there may not have been much difference in the social cue values berween the two conditions. Several studies are relevant to the question of whether positively reinforcing incorrect responses only differentially affects the learning process in schizophrenics and normals. Atkinson and Robinson (in press) included these conditions as another variable in their study and found that normals learned relatively better when rewarded for correct responses, whereas schizophrenics learned relatively better when punished or given feedback for incorrect responses. Atkinson and Robinson propose that schizophrenics are more highly motivated to escape punishment than normals, and also that socially administered rewards have less dear-cut meaning to the schizophrenic than to the normal. Other studies (Cavanaugh, Cohen, & Lang, 1960; Leventhal,