Generalization of the effects of teacher- and self-administered token reinforcers to nontreated students.
Self-managed tokens create peer spill-over; teacher-managed tokens do not.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked in a regular elementary classroom. They picked one student to earn tokens for paying attention.
Some days the teacher handed out the tokens. Other days the same student paid himself when he met his goal. The class never earned tokens.
The researchers watched if untreated kids also paid more attention when tokens were in play.
What they found
When the student gave himself tokens, the whole class paid better attention. The untreated peers copied the focused behavior.
When the teacher gave the same student tokens, only that child improved. The rest of the class stayed the same.
How this fits with other research
Allison (1976) showed that any classroom token system lifts attending and math work. W et al. now add that who runs the system matters for peer spill-over.
Skrtic et al. (1982) found that removing tokens did not hurt fluency gains in adults who stutter. Their null result looks like a contradiction, but they worked with adults in a clinic, not kids in a classroom. The setting and skill changed the token effect.
Krentz et al. (2016) later used tokens to boost walking in adults with ID. Together these studies show tokens work across ages and skills, yet self-management may be the key for peer influence.
Why it matters
You can get two gains for the price of one. Let one learner self-monitor and self-pay tokens. The class sees a clear rule and starts to follow it without any extra work from you. Save teacher-delivered tokens for one-to-goals where peer impact is not needed.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Ten, black, second-grade boys served in a series of single-subject studies. They were from poor families, did not do well in arithmetic, were deficient in sustained attention, and presented behavior problems at school. One boy was a therapeutic confederate. Of the remaining nine nontreated students, three observed the confederate reinforced by a teacher, three observed the confederate self-reinforce without having an opportunity to use "self-reinforcement" themselves, and three observed self-reinforcement while having an opportunity to use "self-reinforcement." The target behavior was attending. Other measures of outcome were glancing, academic achievement, and accuracy of reinforcement. The basic experimental design consisted of an ABAB withdrawal applied to the confederate while the nontreated students remained on baseline. Generalization was expressed as a ratio (i.e., percent change in the generalization measure divided by percent change in the target behavior). Teacher-administered reinforcers to the confederate did not produce generalization of any kind. Both arrangements of self-administered reinforcers to the confederate produced across-subjects generalization and subject-response generalization. Additionally, the confederate manifested response generalization.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1981 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1981.14-435