MAINTENANCE FOLLOWING REWARD AND COST TOKEN PROGRAMS

The maintenance of treatment gains achieved in a classroom with reward and response cost token programs was compared in a group of 10 children with academic and/or behavior problems. Differentially superior maintenance of on-task behavior during fading of the response cost program was predicted on the basis of differential discriminability of treatment withdrawal. A within-subjects design and analysis revealed that both the reward and response cost programs had large and equivalent treatment effects. During fading of the response cost program, all children maintained their rates of on-task behavior. During fading of the reward program, half of the children did not maintain their rates of on-task behavior, while the remaining five children did. The five non-maintainers obtained significantly elevated scores on the Aggression and Hyperactivity factors of the Teacher Rating Scale (TRS) (Conners, 1969). The results are discussed in the context of procedural differences between reward and response cost programs and theories of hyperactivity. © 1990 Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy. All rights reserved.