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While token economies may be one of the earliest well-known examples of applied behavior analysis in practice, this may have led to two larger issues: overreliance and misunderstanding. This week, we review some older articles leveraging token economy technology in applied areas both old (classroom behavior!) and new (mining!) to see whether everything is as rose-colored as we might have remembered it.

This episode is available for 1.0 LEARNING CEU.

Articles discussed this episode:

McLaughlin, T.F. & Malaby, J. (1972). Intrinsic reinforcement in a classroom token economy. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 5, 263-270. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1972.5-263

Bassett, J.E. & Blanchard, E.B. (1977). The effect of the absence of close supervision on the use of response cost in a prison token economy. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 10, 375-379. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1977.10-375

Fox, D.K., Hopkins, B.L., & Anger, W.K. (1987). The long-term effects of a token economy on safety performance in open-pit mining. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 20, 215-224. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1987.20-215

Zlomke, K. & Zlomke, L. (2003). Token economy plus self-monitoring to reduce disruptive classroom behaviors. The Behavior Analyst Today, 4, 177-182. doi: 10.1037/h0100117