Lester, a 29-year-old smoker, has a head injury and lives in a group home with four other men. They have staff members who are with them 24 hours per day to help them with everyday tasks. Lester often displays aggressive or otherwise inappropriate behaviors as a result of his brain injury. For this reason, the staff members have been trained by the agency psychologist to give him a coupon every time Lester shows an appropriate behavior. When he saves up eight coupons, Lester is rewarded with a cigarette. Which of the following techniques is the staff members using with Lester?a) healing circle
b) aversion therapy
c) a token economy
d) unconditional positive regard

The Answer is C) Token economy.

Explanation:

A token economy is a psychological technique which rewards  good or appropriate behavior with tokens that can be interchanged for something desired.

Items such as a chip, coin, star, sticker, or in this case a coupon is a token token that is exchanged for what the patient Lester truly wants in this case a cigarette.

A token economy may also be used outside of a psychiatric hospital. It could be used in business to promote a the purchase of a specific item or in schools to activate or actuate a specific kind of behaviour.

For example,  tokens may be used as a way of “paying” children for completing tasks and the children can then use these tokens to buy desired activities or items such as sweets, icecream or toys.

Cheers!