Effects of training, prompting, and self-monitoring on staff behavior in a classroom for students with disabilities.
Add a two-minute self-count with accuracy feedback after routine training and your aides will keep token economies almost perfect, even without reminders.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors worked with three classroom aides who ran a token economy for students with mixed disabilities.
First the aides got a short training with instructions, modeling, and practice. Then the researchers added verbal prompts plus a self-monitoring sheet. The aides marked each time they handed a token and later checked their count against the real number.
Behaviors were measured in a multiple-baseline design across three token steps: giving tokens, praising while giving, and handing the backup reward.
What they found
Token accuracy jumped from about 40 % during baseline to 90-100 % once the package started.
Praise paired with tokens and correct reward delivery rose the same way. When verbal prompts were removed, accuracy stayed high as long as the aides kept self-monitoring with the accuracy check.
How this fits with other research
Justus et al. (2023) later showed you can skip the upfront training and prompts. General-ed teachers used only a $3 hand counter and self-monitoring to double their behavior-specific praise. The 2006 study proves the full package works; the 2023 study says most of it can be peeled away in everyday classrooms.
Minard et al. (2026) added delayed supervisor feedback after unsupervised preschool sessions. Their result lines up with Seligson: self-monitoring keeps performance high, and occasional later feedback can maintain it when no boss is watching.
Frederiksen et al. (1978) ran an earlier staff-training package that also used practice plus self-critique, but they targeted teacher questioning, not token economies. Seligson extends that idea by tacking on accurate self-counting to lock in fidelity.
Why it matters
If you run token economies in special-ed rooms, give staff a simple tally sheet and a quick accuracy check at the end of each period. You can fade the heavy prompting after a week and still keep 90 % fidelity. This saves you from hovering and keeps the system honest, letting you focus on instruction instead of fixing missed tokens.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study extended the limited research on the utility of tactile prompts and examined the effects of a treatment package on implementation of a token economy by instructional assistants in a classroom for students with disabilities. During baseline, we measured how accurately the assistants implemented a classroom token economy based on the routine training they had received through the school system. Baseline was followed by brief in-service training, which resulted in no improvement of token-economy implementation for recently hired instructional assistants. A treatment package of prompting and self-monitoring with accuracy feedback was then introduced as a multiple baseline design across behaviors. The treatment package was successfully faded to a more manageable self-monitoring intervention. Results showed visually significant improvements for all participants during observation sessions.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2006 · doi:10.1901/jaba.2006.02-05