Implementing the Token Economy System to Decrease Distracted Behavior for a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

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Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
A clear description of the methods used to achieve the purpose or goals for the work.
A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

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Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

Implementing the Token Economy System to Decrease Distracted Behavior for a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Name: Kiran Sehgal
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Cedar Grove
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Senior thesis
Funding: NONE

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is one of the most prevalent neurodevelopmental disabilities in the United States. Thus, educational institutions must develop effective methods to provide aid to children diagnosed with ASD. Past research supports the use of different intervention systems based on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) treatment to help children with symptoms of ASD. Specifically, in this study the researcher used the token economy intervention system to treat an eight-year-old child diagnosed with ASD.The desired behavior change was to decrease the number of times that he was distracted and redirected during math class. Stickers were used as positive reinforcement tokens and small toys were back-up reinforcers. This current study focused particularly on the child’s personal interests when deciding on the items used as tokens, chart, and small toys. This was to further past literature to support the relevance of considering the interests of the child while selecting these items in being a moderating variable of the effectiveness of the intervention. It was hypothesized that the number of times the student was distracted and redirected would decrease with the use of the token economy intervention. The results supported this hypothesis according to the negative data trendline.

Poster file