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The article cites a study that aims to analyze the effects of the tranquilizing drug "thorazine" on attempts to change, through selective reinforcement, the preferred responses to stimulus words in patients with schizophrenia. The results showed no evidence that thorazine has any significant effect on attempts to alter the preferred responses to stimulus words of these patients. The drug did not interfere with performance on retention after it was administered during the period from the learning trials to the test for retention. It was stressed that learning accomplished under drug conditions was not held, the same with learning accomplished under placebo conditions.

The article discusses the relationship of subjects whose verbal behavior did not change during a verbal conditioning experiment with those subjects whose verbal behavior did change. Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS) was chosen because a number of hypotheses could be generated relative to the performance of "conditionable" and "nonconditionable" subjects on these scales. Sixty schizophrenics were given the EPPS and verbal conditioning trials. These subjects were divided into a "conditionable" group and a "nonconditionable" group on the basis of their performance on the conditioning trials. The EPPS scores of these two groups were then compared. As compared to "nonconditionable" subjects, "conditionable" subjects had lower scores.