The Earn-Your-Way Credit System: Use of a Token Economy in Narcotic Rehabilitation

Abstract

The “Earn-Your-Way” credit system is an effort to assess the effectiveness of contingent reinforcement techniques in the treatment of heroin addicts. Rehabilitation efforts employing token economies have recently yielded encouraging results with groups of juvenile delinquents (Fineman, 1968; Tyler and Brown, 1968), with mentally retarded children (Lent, 1968) and with chronic psychiatric hospital patients (Atthow and Krasner, 1968; Montgomery and McBurney, 1970). Bernard and Eiesenman (1967) demonstrated the particular effectiveness of contingent reinforcement in conditioning the verbal behavior of a group of sociopaths. For the most part, token economy studies have concentrated on affecting limited areas of behavior. This study represents one of the first applications of the token economy behavioral modification technique to a civilly committed addict population in a milieu treatment program.