The purpose of this study was to find out the effects of token economy with social reinforcement on the modification of nonacademic behaviors of underachieved children and the improvement of their academic achievement.
The subjects was three 8 year o...
The purpose of this study was to find out the effects of token economy with social reinforcement on the modification of nonacademic behaviors of underachieved children and the improvement of their academic achievement.
The subjects was three 8 year old children who were underachieved in J elementary school located in Jeju island. Their target behaviors were noncompliant behavior, distractible behavior, or disruptive behavior respectively. The period of this study was 34 days, including baseline I, treatment I, baseline II, and treatment II. Reinforcement schedule used during treatment was FR1, FR2, FR3, or VR3.
The conclusions of this study were as follows:
First, the token economy with social reinforcement is proved to be effective in modifying nonacademic behaviors of the underachievers, such as noncompliant behavior, distractive behavior, and disruptive behavior.
The frequency of the nonacademic behaviors during baseline was markedly lowered during treatment. It means that children's problem behaviors can be modified by positive guidance, such as the token economy with social reinforcement, except of negative guidance, such as blames or punishment. And children seems to be willing to change their problem behaviors positively in the process of teacher's delivering tokens to them. Their changing behaviors affected positively even other classmates in their class, thus making desirable learning environments.
Second, the token economy with social reinforcement is proved to be effective in improving the academic achievement of the underachievers.
The subjects showed higher attainment than other children in terms of grade differences between pre- and post- achievement tests. It means that as children's nonacademic behaviors are reduced, their attention is probably paid largely on other subject matter learning activities and also is related to learning behavior with positive participation, thus making higher academic attainments than usual.
Further studies suggested are as follows: First, the token economy should be applied to other behaviors related to various settings, such as other activities in the school. Second, the token economy connected to home teaching should be studied. Third, various subjects need to be studied.