The Effects Of Token Reinforcement And Self-Recording On The Self-Medicating Behavior Of Institutionalized Psychiatric Patients

One of the major problems in outpatient psychiatric treatment has been the extreme irregularity with which patients use their medicines. Believing that one approach to this problem involves the teaching of self-medication skill to patients during psychiatric hospitalization, this experiment attempted to assess the effects of token reinforcement and self-recording on that behavior. Results indicated that tokens could effectively increase the frequency of the self-medicating response, but self-recording may not be able to maintain that increase.