Ayllon and Azrin found the number of daily chores increased 8 times after introducing token economy
Token economies have low ecologicalvalidity
Why do token economies have low ecological validity?
They work best in institutions as they can be controlled by clinicians. When patients leave institutions, they no longer have reinforcement to receive as a reward
Why are TEs considered unethical?
Clinicians use food or entertainment as reword. This removes basicneeds/pleasures from patients as they now have to display desirable behaviour to receive them
TE has been criticised as it doesn’t help the patient, it just makes them more sociallyacceptable
Alternative approaches that do not raise the same ethical issues like arttherapy (also recommended by NICE)
