Use of a token economy to eliminate excessive inappropriate social behavior in an adult with developmental disabilities

Adults with developmental disabilities frequently have both deficits in app ropriate social skills and excesses in inappropriate social behavior (Matso n, LeBlanc, & Weinheimer, 1999). Typically, published treatment studies hav e focused on social skills training procedures that teach and promote the u se of new social behaviors. However, only a few studies have focused on man agement of existing social behaviors that are problematic because they occu r excessively or in an inappropriate context (Wright, Herzog, & Seymour, 19 92). The current study focuses on management of three types of inappropriat e social behavior in a 26-year-old male with moderate mental retardation: i nappropriate social interactions, inappropriate sexual behavior, and verbal aggression. A token economy with response cost procedure was implemented u sing a DRO interval as the basis for earning tokens. Using a multiple-basel ine design across behaviors, each of the three types of inappropriate socia l behavior was successfully treated. After demonstrating the success of the procedure, the DRO interval was increased while maintaining the reductions in inappropriate social behaviors. Appropriate behaviors such as initiatin g conversation, shaking hands, etc maintained throughout the intervention. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.