Improving Social Interaction in a Chronic Psychotic Using Discriminated Avoidance (“Nagging”): Experimental Analysis and Generalization

Abstract

Three social-interaction behaviors of a withdrawn chronic schizophrenic were increased using a discriminated avoidance ("nagging") procedure. The three behaviors were: (a) voice volume loud enough so that two-thirds of his speech was intellibible at a distance of 3m; (b) duration of speech of at least 15 sec; (c) placement of hands and elbows on the armrests of the chair in which he was sitting. "Nagging" consisted of verbal prompts to improve performance when the behaviors did not meet their criteria. A combined withdrawal and multiple-baseline design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the procedure, and the contingency was sequentially applied to each of the three behaviors in each of four different interactions to determine the degree of stimulus and response generalization. Results indicated that the contingency was the effective element in increasing the patient's appropriate performance, and that there was a high degree of stimulus generalization and a moderate degree of response generalization. After the patient's discharge from the hospital, the durability of improvement across time and setting was determined in followup sessions conducted at a day treatment center and at a residential care home. Volume and duration generalized well to the new settings, while arm placement extinguished immediately.

Training Skills in the Psychiatrically Disabled: Learning Coping and Competence

“…Overlearning and repetitious training of exemplars of greetings resulted in generalization of the greeting behavior to persons not involved in the training. Several replications and extensions of this approach, using single subject experimental designs, confirmed the ability of regressed patients to learn social responses under highly constrained and directive training protocols (Wallace and Davis 1974;Fichter et al 1976;Wallace et al 1980). Training included frequent and immediate reinforcement for minimal social verbalizations.…”

Negative Reinforcement in Applied Behavior Analysis: An Emerging Technology

“…A less intrusive but similar procedure was used by Fichter, Wallace, Liberman, and Davis (1976) in an attempt to improve the social skills of a chronic and withdrawn schizophrenic male. The researchers targeted three aspects of his conversational behavior: voice loudness, duration of verbal responding, and keeping his hands on the armrests of his chair while speaking.…”

Estudo do comportamento psicótico pela Análise do Comportamento: revisão das publicações no JEAB e JABA

“…As pesquisas cujas contingências foram de reforçamento negativo utilizaram como estímulo aversivo derrubar comida na roupa da paciente enquanto a estivesse alimentando (Ayllon & Michael, 1959), retirada da atividade solicitada (Mitchell & Stoffelmayr, 1973) e solicitações do comportamento desejado repetidas por um membro da equipe (Fichter, Wallace, Liberman & Davis, 1976).…”