The effect of social and token economy reinforcements on academic achievement of students with intellectual disabilities

Objective: This study investigates the effect of social and token economy reinforcements on academic achievement of 9th grade boy students with intellectual disabilities in an experimental science class in Tehran Province.

Method: The method used for this study was experimental by pre-test, post- test with a control group. The boy students with intellectual disabilities from three junior high schools participated in this study. The sample consisted of thirty, 9th grade boy students with intellectual disabilities in the selected schools; the schools were chosen by the multi-stage cluster method. To measure the progress of students in the science class, a teacher made test and the Wechsler intelligence test for matching the groups for IQ were used. To ensure validity, the content validity criteria depended tests calculated by the Lashe method and teachers' perspective were used. The reliability coefficient was obtained by the reliability coefficient of related tests; the percent agreement method and the obtained data were analyzed using one-way variance analysis and Shefe prosecution test.

Results: The results showed that there was a significant increase in academic achievement of students with intellectual disabilities when using token economy than using social reinforcements compared with the control group. Also, when using social reinforcements, the academic achievement of students was more than the control group.

Conclusion: Token economy and social reinforcements increased the academic achievement of students with intellectual disabilities in the science class; and also the effect of token economy reinforcements was more than social reinforcements on the subjects.