Verbal Conditioning of Neurotic and Psychopathic Delinquents Using Verbal and Nonverbal Reinforcers

Abstract

From a larger group of 425 delinquents, 60 were classified as neurotic or psychopathic by test scores and conditioned in one of three ways for use of the pronoun “they.” Neurotics conditioned significantly better for the verbal reinforcer “good” than for a buzzer which had no meaning assigned to it. In the buzzer-without-meaning group, neuroticism scores correlated positively with conditioning, while psychopathy scores correlated negatively with conditioning (ps < .01).