Theses and Dissertations from UMD

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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Author: search.filters.author.Catalano, Lauren TheresaSubject: search.filters.subject.Behavioral Economics

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    The Valuation of Social Reinforcement in Schizophrenia
    (2015) Catalano, Lauren Theresa; Blanchard, Jack J; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Facial affect perception impairments impede social functioning in schizophrenia. What remains unknown is how individuals with schizophrenia assign value to pleasant facial expressions that typically motivate social affiliation. The current study adapted a matching pennies game (Shore & Heerey, 2011) to assess the subjective value of social feedback in terms of money. Individuals with schizophrenia and controls were instructed to choose the same side of a coin as six computerized partners, each of whom provided different rates of monetary feedback and types of social feedback. In a later test phase, participants chose which partner to play from amongst pairs of partners. Among participants who appropriately learned task contingencies, individuals with schizophrenia failed to use genuine smiles to motivate choices to the same extent as controls; however, money was equally valued. These findings suggest that there is a reduced sensitivity to social rewards in schizophrenia.