The Token Economy

During this time of fast approaching finals, studying is all we ever get around to doing in this household. Dishes are piling up because we only take time to eat and then it's right back to studying. The kitchen table looks more like our textbooks threw up all over it than a place where you eat.

But luckily for us Brad is taking a course called learning and cognition where he learns all about learning and strategies to learn. It is one of these strategies that we have decided to implement into our lives and it has changed how we study and how we use our time when we aren't studying. We have been so blessed by the effects and to even feel inspired to start this that we decided to share our experience in hopes that it can benefit others.

The Token Economy
The first time I was exposed to this was in my grade 4 classroom. If we behaved correctly and did our homework we got what my teacher called "Wilson Bucks". We would then be able to trade those in to buy all sorts of goodies from her drawer. This is an example of a token economy. We took this idea and changed it for ourselves.

First, we decided what we would be rewarded for. Our decision ended up being 20 consecutive minutes of really good studying.

After, we chose to be rewarded simply by putting check marks up on the whiteboard by our name for each of those 20 minutes of studying.

Lastly, we needed to figure out what behaviors distracted us from studying and needed to be used as reinforcers to study. We came up with games on our devices, social media, and Netflix.
We attached a price (amount of check marks) to each thing. With one check mark equaling 10 minutes of playing a game or being on social media. A 40 minute Netflix show when watched together cost 3 each, but when alone it cost 5. A whole movie together cost 7 each and 10 when alone.

We decided to make the cost of stuff we did together cheaper because doing activities as a family is better than doing it alone. The effect of this is to make the tokens a secondary reinforcer and the primary reinforcer (the distractions) are then contingent upon the secondary reinforcers which are contingent upon the studying behavior. This leads to an increase in the studying behavior. Voilà!