THE TOKEN ECONOMY: AN EVALUATIVE REVIEW¹

TLDR

Token economies are widely used across settings, offering benefits but facing obstacles such as staff training, client resistance, contingency circumvention, and non‑responsiveness, and their effectiveness is limited by insufficient attention to generalization and extinction resistance. The study presents procedures aimed at sustaining performance after reinforcement withdrawal to address the critical issue of generalization. The authors review token programs across psychiatric, developmental, classroom, delinquent, and autistic populations, present procedures to sustain performance after reinforcement withdrawal, and offer methodological suggestions for applied token reinforcement studies.

Abstract

Token economies have been applied in a wide range of settings. While there are several advantages to the use of this procedure, there are obstacles that may impede its implementation and therapeutic efficacy. These include: staff training, client resistance, circumvention of the contingencies, and non-responsiveness of subjects. Studies employing token programs with psychiatric patients, retardates, children in classroom settings, delinquents, and autistic children are reviewed. Although token economies are successful while in operation, the issue of generalization of behavior gains or resistance to extinction has not been given careful consideration. Inasmuch as generalization is perhaps the most crucial issue, several procedures are presented that are designed to facilitate maintenance of performance when reinforcement is withdrawn. Methodological suggestions for investigations on token reinforcement in applied settings are presented.