How Token Economies Increase The Latency Of A Gifted Child...

Token economies have been used successfully to reduce the latency of responding to instructions; Buisson, Murdock, Reynolds and Cronin (1995) used a token economy to decrease the response latency for completing headings within a set time limit in hearing impaired children and Fjellstedt and Sulzer-Azà ¡roff (1973) used a token system to reduce latency of a student who did not follow directions in a given time limit. The children received tokens, which were paired to back up reinforcers contingent upon them being compliant and following directions within the time limit set. In this study the aim is to use procedures similar to these two studies using a token economy to reduce the response latency in compliance of a gifted child getting off their computer from the get off time that they have been given, to when they actually shut down and gets off the computer for the day. The target behaviour is the child not complying with the family rules that state a set time to get off and stay off the computer and iPad each day. The operational definition of getting off the computer/iPad in this case is, the computer and iPad are shutdown completely and the child has removed himself from the computer desk and reported in person to his parents, and does not go back on his computer or iPad for the rest of the night. Method Participants Niall (not real name), an 11-year-old boy identified as gifted scoring in the 99.5 percentile for his age in the Woodcock Johnson III test. He is