A comparison of social skills training and contingent attention to improve behavioural deficits of chronic psychiatric patients.

Twelve chronic psychiatric patients were treated with either social skills training or contingent attention to improve behavioural assets or deficits noted on the ward by independently trained raters blind to experimental conditions. Treatment was applied across groups using a multiple-baseline format. Inspection of the data revealed that clinically significant improvements in socially appropriate assets and deficits observed on the ward resulted with social skills training but no substantiative change accrued due to the contingent attention. The behaviours selected for treatment were those which staff were most willing to reinforce. This variable may account, in part at least, for the generalization of treatment effects to the natural environment with persons who received social skills training.