A teenager in a residential facility has earned enough tokens to buy his favorite candy bar. The candy bar is

• A. A primary reinforcer
• B. A token reinforcer
• C. A conditioned reinforcer
• D. A back-up reinforcer

Answer: (D)

The main idea here is how a token economy works: tokens act as conditioned reinforcers that you earn for behavior, and those tokens can be exchanged for actual rewards called back-up reinforcers. In this scenario, the candy bar is the reward you obtain by exchanging tokens. That makes it a back-up reinforcer—the item that the tokens are exchanged for within the system.

Keep in mind that, while candy is inherently reinforcing as a food item (a primary reinforcer in general terms), its role in a token economy is to serve as the back-up reinforcer available through the token exchange.