Navigating Token Economies: One Behaviour Analyst’s Failure
by Shawna Fleming, BCBA
A token economy is a fancy word in the ABA world for a reward chart, sticker chart, token system, money system, etc. with the aim of encouraging desired behaviour using positive reinforcement. In a token economy the individual is given a “token” as a form of immediate positive reinforcement when they exhibit the goal behaviour or meet a specific goal. Tokens can take various forms including points, stickers, money, wooden chips or other tangible items. The tokens themselves have no value but can be exchanged for desired items or privileges.
Common criticism of token economies include:
Dependency on external rewards
Short-term focus
Pressure/stress associated with the chart
Complexity and maintenance of the plan
Inflexibility of the plan
Focus on compliance over intrinsic motivation to “do a good job”
If done correctly, a token economy can be a kind way of supporting your child to meet a big goal or push your child to be committed to a goal that is important to the family function!
Changing our own behaviour is challenging, and sometimes we need a push to make a change! As a behaviour analyst, I often use the example of going to bed at a reasonable hour. I know I should go to sleep and have a goal in mind, but I almost never meet that goal. It’s not that I’m not motivated to go to bed early, it’s that what I’d need to do to go to bed early seems impossible and I have become a sucker for immediate reinforcement (i.e. scrolling social media) rather than doing what I know future Shawna will benefit from.
For children, this is much more nuanced. We should continue to explain to them why things like going to bed or helping around the house are important, but they will likely need an extra push to actually reach the goal.
The key components of a successful token economy are:
Identifying the specific behaviour and clearly defining it (i.e., what is the goal?)
Identifying the small steps that may be needed to meet that goal (e.g, if I usually go to bed at 11, I’d set myself up for failure if I decided that I now was going to go to bed 9, it’s too big of a leap! I’d be better off setting a goal of 10:45 pm bedtime)
When is the first goal changed to meet the ultimate goal (for example, I might start at 10:45 and after 3 successful nights, move it to 10:30, etc.)
What will be used as tokens (e.g., coins, pom poms, stickers, etc.)
The reward options (e.g. will it be one static reward or a menu of items they can select from)
The contingency or when and how will tokens be given and when is the time they can be cashed in
Monitoring/evaluating progress
As a Behaviour Analyst, I often coach others on how to do this successfully at home and wanted to share a recent failure I had at my house and what I did to fix it! The first step is clearly identifying the ‘problem’ to be tackled and deciding if it is something that is important to change and that you’re committed to putting in the effort consistently that will result in the change.
For me, the problem was my preschool-aged son was out of his room repeatedly after we put him to bed, up to 10 times a night and staying up WAY too late in his room! For a long time, this was a problem, but not something I was ready to put in the effort to change and so we just kept bringing him back to his room when he’d come out. Eventually, I was ready to put in the effort to change this behaviour and get some of my free time back! So I started on the path to figuring out how to implement a token economy for staying in bed.
The goal was staying in his room after we gave him a kiss and hug good night and closed the door. Prior to starting any intervention he was out of his room up to 10 times a night before eventually falling asleep. We decided to use a common approach of a “bedtime pass” where the child can exchange a ‘pass’ to leave their room.
I wanted the intervention to be successful and so the recommendation is to start the child with more than you think they’ll need so we started with 5 tokens with the goal to get it down to 3. As much as I’d love for my child to never come out of his room, I knew this was an unreasonable expectation given the last several months and also wanted him to have an option to come out if he was feeling scared, needed to use the bathroom, etc. I didn’t want him to think his parents were never available, but to be more thoughtful about when he was coming out of his room and why.
Every time he came out of his room, he had to give us a token. Our rule was that if he had at least one token at the end of the night, the next day after daycare he could have bubble gum ice cream. We would give him one spoonful of ice cream for every token he had left over in the morning. We saw initial success for a few weeks and then it “stopped working”.
I immediately thought, “he’s not motivated for ice cream anymore, I need more novelty!” so I got to work making a treasure box (a bin with a label, ‘treasure box’, nothing fancy) and put in several items that he could ‘purchase’ with his tokens - less desired items were cheaper and his favourite treat, kinder surprise eggs, were the most expensive (4 tokens). We saw no change in his behaviour, despite him talking all day about the kinder surprise and appearing ‘motivated’ to get that item. After 2 weeks and no successful nights, I knew we had to change the plan and I put my behaviour analyst hat on.
What I realized was that it wasn’t that he didn’t like the ice cream or the treasure box I’d made, it's that the intervention was not fulfilling his needs at the moment. The short-term reinforcement was hard for him to delay to access the “big prize” I’d picked.
To take a step back, we know children’s brains are developing, especially the executive functioning part of their brain that supports planning, creating and setting goals and emotion regulation. To expect my preschool-aged son to stay in his room after bed for a prize he’d get tomorrow was too big of a leap and not filling his immediate needs.
When I started looking at why he was coming out of his room, it was often for very silly reasons like “I want to tell you something” or “I want to show you something.” He wanted our attention. I needed to factor that into our plan and I hadn’t previously!
We switched up the plan and started giving him tokens on set intervals (the first token after 5 minutes in his room, the next 10 minutes after that, then 15, then 20) and usually he’d fall asleep before the last one was given. When we’d give him tokens, we’d stay for 1-2 minutes and let him show us a toy or talk to us about something and remind him we’d be back. The first night we made this change, we saw an immediate improvement in the number of times he came out of his room at night.
For now, this plan is working! I don’t expect it to work forever and may need to adapt my approach. Perhaps, this plan will work and he will stop coming out of his room at night, at which time we’d stop giving tokens for that goal and likely set a new goal. Token economies are not meant to be a ‘forever plan’ but rather something you put in place to encourage your child to meet a new expectation or goal and fade away as they become successful.
All this to say, even us “professionals” make mistakes, so don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and reach out to your behaviour team if you’re not seeing success, have questions about where to begin or are unsure how to fade out a token economy!
