Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Use Of Token Reinforcement To Facilitate A Therapeutic Style Of Verbal Interaction In Groups Of Psychiatric Patients, Henry G. Martin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study evaluated the use of a token, operant conditioning technique as a treatment procedure in a group setting with chronic, hospitalized, psychiatric patients. Fifteen patients were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and to one control group; each group included five patients. The two experimental groups received tokens during phases of contingent reinforcement for "Therapeutic Responses" and under a yoked-control phase of non-contingent token reinforcement; the sequence of these phases was the major difference between the two experimental groups. The control group met under conditions of no tokens, and the frequency of "Therapeutic Responses" was recorded on those subjects. …