token economies Flashcards
what’re the 3 categories of institutional behaviour that can be tacked using token economies
personal care
condition-related behaviour
social behaviour
what’re the 2 major benefits of TE’s
- Improved QoL (within the hospital)
- Normalises behaviour to help adapt back into the real world
what is selective reinforcement
a type of behaviour modification which seeks to increase the occurrence of desirable behaviours by responding with a pleasurable stimulus, while seeking to prevent undesirable behaviours by not responding to them
what is the process of selective reinforcement
desirable behaviour (cleanliness)
secondary reinforcer (tokens)
primary reinforcer (‘rewards’ that a psych ward patient will value)
what is the main issue with token economies
- maladaptive behaviour, may be due to becoming reliant on their carers, which can affect things such as getting dressed and personal hygiene
- token-rewarding delays lead to “delay discounting” where the encouragement to repeat the desirable behaviours isn’t effective
what do TE questions need in answers
examples eg specific operationalised behaviours/rewards with #’s of tokens etc
what is an example of a desirable behaviour in the TE system
personal hygeine
what is the secondary reinforcer in a TE system
tokens
what is the primary reinforcer in TE systems
‘rewards’ valued by psych ward patients
what is a strength eval for TE systems
- researchers identified 7 high quality recent studies on the effectiveness of TE’s in a hospital setting
- all studies showed negative symptom reductions and a decline in frequency of unwanted behaviours
- a strength as it shows TE systems to have real world application and success in improving patients’ lives while in institutions and behaviour ms are more normal for life outside
what’re 3 neg evals of TE systems
- counter supporting evidence
- ethical issues
- other suitable alternative therapies
how is supporting evidence countered in a limitation of TE system
- 7 studies is a small base, likely to suffer the ‘file drawer problem’ - cognitive bias towards positive published findings because the undesirable results have been filed away
- issue as it makes the TE system seem more effective than they actually are
what’re ethical issues with TE systems
- professionals can control people’s behaviour meaning imposing one persons norms onto others (eg a patient may have strong ‘undesirable’ political beliefs)
- also restricting pleasure availability to those who don’t behave as desired means that very ill people, already having distressing symptoms, have an even worse time
- weakness and has led to family members taking legal action against those implementing a TE system, leading to its decline
how is the presence of other alternative substitute therapies a neg eval for TE systems
- other alternatives have fewer ethical issues, eg art therapy is a high-gain low-risk approach to managing Sz
- limitation as it shows there are other therapies which can be used to help reward/treat patients without the same ethical impacts of TE symptoms
