Motivation and Task Complexity as Factors in the Psychomotor Responses of Schizophrenics¹

Contingency learning in chronic schizophrenia and its relevance to social motivation deficit

“…The performance deficit of those patients who found social stimulation reinforcing when the response reinforcement contingency was specified appears to be the result of a learning deficit. This is consistent with findings showing that schizophrenics are responsive to general praise and encouragement given by the experimenter irrespective of the correctness of the patient's response (Stotsky, 1957; Goodstein, Guertin & Blackburn, 1961; D'Alessio & Spence, 1%3) and also with results reported by Cull (1971) that in a conformity situation schizophrenics are no less conforming than normals when they are given information as to how the rest of the group are responding. Whether the learning deficit is present in the early stages of the schizophrenic process or whether it results from living in an institutional environment in which the contingencies imposed tend to be independent of the patient's behaviour is not known.…”

Relation between latency and redundancy-associated deficit in schizophrenic reaction time performance.

“…Improvement in latency is consistent with the findings that schizophrenic performance is improved under conditions of positive rewards and incentives. Stotsky (1957) reported decreased simple reaction time in schizophrenics after intervals of encouragement by their psychotherapists. Improvement with positive motivation has similarly been reported for complex reaction time (Benton, Jentsch, & Wahler, 1960;Goodstein, Guertin, & Blackburn, 1961;Stotsky 1957), paired-associate learning (Goldman 1963(Goldman , 1965, verbal discrimination (Spence, Goodstein, & Lair, 1965), digit symbol substitution (Olson, 1958), and the simple motor tasks of dynamometer squeezing (Crumpton & Mutalipassi, 1969) and putting pins in a board (D'Alessio & Spence, 1963).…”

Effects of prior experimenter-subject relationships on reinforced reaction time of schizophrenics and normals.

“…The experimental group consisted of 39 male chronic schizophrenics from the Northampton, Massachusetts, Veterans Administration Hospital, hospitalized for 2 or more years. Chronic rather than acute patients were employed because it could be assumed that the former were more lacking in social motivation (Rosenbaum, Grisell, & Macavey, 1957;Stotsky, 1957). Thirty-nine male nonpsychiatric patients from the West Haven, Connecticut, Veterans Administration Hospital were employed as controls; they were hospitalized for medical purposes and had no history of psychiatric illness.…”

“…There is much untested opinion in the literature about the importance of the relationship between experimenter and subject; a number of authors have emphasized that a good working relationship with the schizophrenic patient is crucial if he is to be well motivated in the experimental situation (Hunt & Gofer, 1944;Kent, 1918;Rodnick & Garmezy, 1957;Winder, 1960). Some support for this notion is provided by Stotsky (1957); unlike a number of other investigators (Atkinson & Robinson, 1961;Cavanaugh, Cohen, & Lang, 1960;Losen, 1961), he found that positive reinforcement facilitated psychomotor performance in schizophrenics. One difference between Stotsky's study and the others was that he employed the patients' therapists to provide praise and encouragement; in the other studies the experimenter, a relative stranger, was the sole source of praise.…”