Reduction of Facial Gestures through Loss of Token Reinforcers

A procedure involving presentation of tokens, exchangeable for the opportunity to play a piano, which strengthened many appropriate work behaviors of a retardate in an occupational setting, failed to affect an attention-getting, distractable, facial gesture. The frequency of gesturing was drastically reduced when a deliberate contingency, token removal for gesture display, was superimposed on the above procedure. The simultaneous use of token delivery and token removal enabled the assessment of the tokens as conditioned reinforcers without causing disruptive behavioral effects which are possible with procedures wherein the back-up reinforcers are removed.