| Abstract: | Several recent studies have reported mild social punishment to be more effective than social reward for motivating schizophrenics' learning. However, theoretical formulations of schizophrenia, as well as learning studies with normals, suggest that the relative effectiveness of positive and negative reinforcement varies with the individual's dependency needs and conflicts. This study was therefore designed to determine whether social rewards and social punishments would have differential effects upon the learning performance of highly dependent (HD) and highly dependency-anxious (HD-A) schizophrenics. In accord with theoretical expectations, the dependent Ss performed better under rewards than under punishment, while the dependency-anxious Ss performed better under punishment than under rewards. However, these differential reactions extinguished within a surprisingly short period. (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
