Abstract
An attempt was made to condition the number and duration of silences and the number of therapist-directed responses in group psychotherapy, using an auditory stimulus as a negative reinforcer. Two experimental and one control group of newly admitted neuropsychiatric Veterans Administration inpatients were Ss. Both silences and therapist-directed responses were reduced during the negative reinforcement procedure in the experimental groups. There were no significant changes in the control group which received no negative reinforcement. Therapist-directed responses recovered but silences remained at a low level during extinction, especially for the experimental group receiving the greater number of conditioning sessions. This finding suggests the possibility of permanently eliminating certain responses if conditioning is carried out long enough and more adaptive responses have an opportunity to emerge and become established. Proposals and speculations for future research were discussed.
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