Restructuring an Existing Token Economy in a Psychiatric Facility for Children

A Modification of the Token Economy for Nonresponsive Youth in Family-Style Residential Care

“…In addition, trends in treatment conditions for privileges earned substantially incline relative to trends in baseline conditions. The modifications merely involved increasing youth access to the backup reward system used in the program, a variation on the token economy recently reported by Moore et al (2001). The value of this variation was heralded in early papers on the token economy (e.g., Allyon & Azrin, 1968;Kazdin, 1977), validated in subsequent discrete studies on token economies (Bushell et al, 1968;McLaughlin & Malaby, 1972, 1975, 1976 but reported only once in research with youth who were nonresponsive to conventional token economy treatment (Moore et al, 2001).…”

“…The modifications merely involved increasing youth access to the backup reward system used in the program, a variation on the token economy recently reported by Moore et al (2001). The value of this variation was heralded in early papers on the token economy (e.g., Allyon & Azrin, 1968;Kazdin, 1977), validated in subsequent discrete studies on token economies (Bushell et al, 1968;McLaughlin & Malaby, 1972, 1975, 1976 but reported only once in research with youth who were nonresponsive to conventional token economy treatment (Moore et al, 2001). This study extends this line of theory and research by establishing experimentally a functional relation between a modified backup reward schedule and improvements in directly measured clinically important dimensions of behavior in adolescents with conduct problems and a history of nonresponse to treatment.…”

“…A consistent conceptual theme integral to virtually all published recommendations for improving token economies is the importance of participant access to reinforcing consequences for appropriate behavior. The majority of published experimental tests of those recommendations involve either changes in token deliveries (e.g., Friman et al, 1997) or changes in access to backup reinforcers (e.g., Bushell et al, 1968;McLaughlin & Malaby, 1972, 1975, 1976Moore et al, 2001), but in either case, the central goal of the changes has been to increase access to reinforcement. The principal differences between the current study and the previous studies merely involve the participants (i.e., nonresponsive conduct-disordered adolescents) and the type of data collected, and thus, we speculate with some confidence that the intervention used here achieved its results primarily through increased access to reinforcement.…”

“…This study attempts to extend the findings of Moore et al (2001) by employing research methods that can detect such a relation. More specifically, this study will attempt to extend the findings of Moore et al by (a) evaluating the influence of backup reward schedule modifications on treatment responsivity of adolescents failing treatment within a residential care setting, (b) using experimental methodology in the evaluation, and (c) using direct measures of behavior.…”

“…The importance of this relationship in token programs has been emphasized repeatedly in discrete studies (e.g., Bushell, Wrobel, & Michaelis, 1968;McLaughlin & Malaby, 1972, 1975, 1976, program descriptions (e.g., Allyon & Azrin, 1968), and reviews of the literature (e.g., Kazdin, 1977). But we found only one published study that strategically modified the relationship between token delivery and schedule of token exchange to address nonresponse to treatment (Moore, Tingstrom, Doggett, & Carlyon, 2001). In that study, 3 youth between 5 and 9 years of age were exposed to two reinforcement delivery schedules wherein token exchange for privileges occurred either once a day or 4 times a day.…”