Token Economy Based Residential Program for Disabled Adults an Empirical Evaluation Leads to Program Modification

Token economy based residential program for disabled adults an empirical evaluation leads to program modification
Institution
Date
Summary
* Token economies in community-based group homes are used to teach independent living skills to psychotic and mentality retarded.
* It is also used with pre-delinquent boys and adult residents.
* Also used to develop attending to task behaviors for hearing impaired.
* The study investigates effects of established token economy upon the acquisition and maintenance of independent living skills for disabled adults, within two halfway houses.
* Halfway houses located in mixed residential and office neighborhood. Residents also participated in the transitional workshop program.
Method
* The subjects were residents of two halfway houses (one male and one female). They joined in June 1985 and left before 32stDecember 1985.
* All subjects read study description and signed an informed consent agreeing to participate.
* The evaluation sample included twelve clients, six males, and six females. Of the twelve eight were hearing impaired, and four were hearing.
Experimental procedure
* By systematically removing the established contingency between the conduct of independent living skills and points earned or lost, and reinstating the contingencies, it was easy to evaluate the effectiveness of token program empirically.
Results
* Of the 12 residents, 6 completed the study successfully; that is reaching step 5 or above.
* All the hearing subjects completed successfully while only 25% of the hearing impaired were successful.
* Thus the ability to hear was fully correlated(r=0.71) with success in the program.
* The significance of that was at 0.05 level ([1, 10] =10.00 with hearing status accounting for 50% of the variance in outcome.
* Hearing status was at 0.05 level also contributed to decreasing in points at (F [1, 53] =8.28) Earned between first and last week while impaired hearing did not contribute...