Token Economy is a very effective approach to deal with disruptive students.

Behaviourism

Behaviorism (or behaviourism) is a scientific approach to understanding the behavior of humans and other animals. Its most important tenet being the belief that all behavior are either reflex actions produced as a response to stimuli in environment or they occur as a consequence an individual’s past learning. Much focus is placed on the paramount influence of reward and punishment in determining the course of action a person is likely to take. (Miltenberger, 2008)

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning (also called instrumental conditioning) is a process of learning primarily identified by Edward L. Thorndike (1874–1949), and it is in par with the fundamentals of behaviourism. According to this approach to learning the strength of a behavior (i.e. the times it is likely to be repeated) is influenced by reinforcement or punishment.

Contingency management

Contingency management (CM) is famously used in substance abuse, often employed as clinical behavior therapy in many drug rehabilitation centers. (Ayllon & Azrin, 1968) CM refers to the application of the principles of operant conditioning, which involves stimulus control and reinforcement to change behavior. When patients adhere to medical advice and involve in prosocial behaviors they are rewarded and maybe punished mildly if they don’t try to overcome their addiction.

Token Economy

A token economy is a system of contingency management in which target behaviors or else the desired responses are provided with reinforcement. The reinforcers are symbols or tokens that may be traded for other primary reinforcers. In applied settings token economies are used with children and adults and they also have been successfully modeled with pigeons in lab settings. (Jackson and Hackenberg, 1996 ; Bullock & Hackenberg, 2006) Token Economy is a very effective approach to deal with disruptive students.

Developing a Token Economy for Recess

Identification of Target behavior;

First step is to identify which activities are inappropriate and need to be changed. Those are what we will call the target behaviours. E.g. pushing, violence and bad language.

Establish Tokens;

Tokens may be anything from a plastic chip to a card with Elmo or other cartoon characters. They ought to be age appropriate. (Hackenberg, 2009). E.g. for kids it could be a Dragon or Pokémon card which would be handed to them as a token.

Choose backup reinforcers;

These should be items that are relevantly attractive to the subjects and can act as a motivator for them. They may be material reinforcers, services or privileges. E.g. a teacher may start with doing a survey in the class to get to know what they really like and what would act as motivator for them. It may be that most of them love playing basketball and thus extra time to play basketball could be considered as a good motivator.

Cost of backup reinforcers;

Determine how much the reinforcer will cost i.e. how many token one has to earn to get hold of the reinforcer. The cost should be determined keeping in mind the cost-benefit ratio with the reinforcer. (Delmendo et. al., 2009) E.g. the teacher would give a token to each kid for not involving in the target behaviours at the end of recess. She has to determine how many tokens should a child have to trade in for some extra time on the basketball ring.

Giving reinforcers on time;

Reinforcers should be given within such an interval that the child associates it with the cause and believes that it would come soon and he/she would not have to wait for getting what he worked for.

Implementing a Token Economy

Token economy has been used in many places and with good results. But many a times systematic presentation of such techniques may be very crude so much so that it would cause one to doubt on the effectiveness of such techniques. (Bailey et al., 2011).

Though if all is done in a very professionally exact and accurate manner the procedure usually does fail to satisfy the needs of the moderator. We shall discuss here an example of how token economy can be used in the playground.

Important things to be kept in mind;

While starting the coaching for workings of token economy, pair it with praise and encouraging gestures like giving a high five.
Encourage care givers to implement the system at home too but be very careful to follow thoroughly.
In the beginning make the tokens easily available so the child gets the hang of things.
Change the schedule of reinforcement to a stringent one gradually to help child learn delayed gratification.

 

Note: More on the topic has been elaborated by Skinner himself in the following video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Ayllon, T., & Azrin, N. H. (1968). The token economy: A motivational system for therapy and rehabilitation. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Bailey, J. R., Gross, A. M., & Cotton, C. R. (2011). Challenges associated with establishing a token economy in a residential care facility. Clinical Case Studies, 10(4), 278–290.

Bullock, C. E., & Hackenberg, T. D. (2006). Second-order schedules of token reinforcement with pigeons: Implications for unit price. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 85, 95–106.

Delmendo, X., Borrero, J. C., Beauchamp, K. L., & Francisco, M. T. (2009). Consumption and response output as a function of unit price: Manipulation of cost and benefit components. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 42, 609–625.

K. Jackson and T.D. Hackenberg (1996 July). Token reinforcement, choice, and self-control in pigeons. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.; 66(1): 29–49. doi:10.1901/jeab.1996.66-29

Miltenberger, R. G. (2008) "Behavioral Modification: Principles and Procedures". Thomson/Wadsworth, p. 9.

T.D. Hackenberg (2009). Token reinforcement: a review and analysis. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 91, 257-286.