Eliminating stealing. Use of stimulus control with an elementary student.

A teacher put small green dots on one boy’s school supplies. Only dotted items earned tokens. The boy lost a token if he took an unmarked item. A reprimand followed every theft. The study ran in a special-ed classroom with a young learners who had been stealing six items each day.

Baseline lasted 5 days. Intervention ran 20 days. Tokens were later faded over the study period. Staff recorded the number of stolen items each school day.

Stealing fell from 6 items a day to 0.32 items a day. After tokens stopped, the rate stayed low at 0.09 items a day over the study period. The green dots alone kept stealing near zero without extra rewards.

The intervention also cut teacher time spent on discipline. The boy kept all his earned privileges and no longer argued when caught.

Dudley et al. (2019) later used the same token-plus-reprimand idea with a young learners who stole food. They added a quick functional analysis first. Stealing still dropped to zero, showing the package works even when you know the function.

Al-Jawahiri et al. (2019) looked at 28 studies that faded reinforcement after token or FCT programs. They found kids with stronger language kept their gains best. The 1983 fade worked because the green dots stayed as a clear cue.

Bohan et al. (2022) thinned group token rewards in a classroom game. Engagement stayed high when checks moved from 2 to 5 minutes. Both papers show you can give fewer rewards if the cue stays in place.

You can stop stealing in under a month with two cheap tools: green dots and a token board. Mark the child’s property, pay only for marked items, and give a calm reprimand for takes. Fade the tokens once the cue controls the behavior. The dot does the work for you, so you spend less time policing supplies and more time teaching.