Verbal conditioning of middle and lower socioeconomic class schizophrenics.

An experiment with 140 male VA hospital patients assessed the verbal conditioning of middle and lower socioeconomic class schizophrenics and normals under conditions of social reinforcement. Ss were reinforced with a positive or negative word said in a positive, negative, or neutral tone of voice. Social class moderated diagnostic group differences in learning. Combining social classes, schizophrenics learned less than normals with reinforcement entailing incongruent word and tone but were equivalent to normals with congruent word/tone reinforcement pairs (i.e., positive word/positive tone and negative word/negative tone). Results are interpreted in terms of the double-bind theory of G. Bateson et al (1956), which views schizophrenic behavior as a response acquired after prolonged exposure to inconsistent patterns of verbal and nonverbal communication. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)