Punishment of an alternative behavior generates resurgence of a previously extinguished target behavior: Punishment and Resurgence (original) (raw)
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Renewal after the punishment of free operant behavior
Three experiments examined the role of context in punishment learning. In Experiment 1, rats were trained to lever press for food in Context A and then punished for responding in Context B (by presenting response-contingent footshock). Punishment led to complete suppression of the response. However, when responding was tested (in extinction) in Contexts A and B, a strong renewal of responding occurred in Context A. In Experiment 2, renewal also occurred when initial reinforcement occurred in Context A, punishment occurred in Context B, and testing occurred in a new context (Context C). In both experiments, behavioral suppression and renewal were not observed in groups that received noncontingent (yoked) footshocks in Context B. In Experiment 3, 2 responses (lever press and chain pull) were separately reinforced in Contexts A and B and then punished in the opposite context. Although the procedure equated the contexts on their association with reinforcement and punishment, renewal of each response was observed when it was tested in its nonpunished context. The contexts also influenced response choice. Overall, the results suggest that punishment is specific to the context in which it is learned, and establish that its context-specificity does not depend on a simple association between the context and shock. Like extinction, punishment may involve learning to inhibit a specific response in a specific context. Implications for theories of punishment and for understanding the cessation of problematic operant behavior (e.g., drug abuse) are discussed.
Effects of differential rates of alternative reinforcement on resurgence of human behavior
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2017
Despite the success of exposure-based psychotherapies in anxiety treatment, relapse remains problematic. Resurgence, the return of previously eliminated behavior following the elimination of an alternative source of reinforcement, is a promising model of operant relapse. Nonhuman resurgence research has shown that higher rates of alternative reinforcement result in faster, more comprehensive suppression of target behavior, but also in greater resurgence when alternative reinforcement is eliminated. This study investigated rich and lean rates of alternative reinforcement on response suppression and resurgence in typically developing humans. In Phase 1, three groups (Rich, n = 18; Lean, n = 18; Control, n = 10) acquired the target response. In Phase 2, target responding was extinguished and alternative reinforcement delivered on RI 1 s, RI 3 s, and extinction schedules, respectively. Resurgence was assessed during Phase 3 under extinction conditions for all groups. Target responding w...
Journal of experimental psychology. Animal learning and cognition, 2015
Resurgence has commonly been viewed as the recovery of an extinguished instrumental behavior that occurs when an alternative behavior that has replaced it is also extinguished. Three experiments with rat subjects examined the effects on resurgence of the temporal distribution of reinforcement for the alternative behavior that is presented while the first response is being eliminated. Experiments 1 and 2 examined resurgence when rich rates of reinforcement at the onset of response elimination became leaner over sessions (i.e., forward thinning) and when lean rates became richer (i.e., reverse thinning). Both procedures weakened resurgence compared with that in a group that received the richest rate during all sessions. However, forward thinning was more effective than reverse thinning at reducing the resurgence effect. Experiment 3 found that final resurgence was eliminated when the alternative behavior was reinforced and extinguished in alternating response elimination sessions. The...
Suppressing effects of aversive stimulation on subsequently punished behaviour
Canadian Journal of Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie, 1964
To determine whether or not the residual effects of pre-shock are dependent on the use of the same aversive stimulus during original treatment and subsequent testing, three experiments were conducted in which different aversive stimuli were used in the treatment and test situations. In Experiment I, two groups of ten rats each were either pre-shocked or not pre-shocked and later subjected to loud noise whenever they pressed a lever to obtain nourishment. In Experiment II, four groups of nine rats each were either pre-shocked and later subjected to loud noise whenever they broke a photocell beam in their exploration of the test chamber, pre-shocked and not punished, not pre-shocked and punished, or not pre-shocked and not punished. In Experiment III, two groups of ten rats each were either sleep-deprived or left unmolested and later both groups were tested in an approach-avoidance conflict situation involving electric shock. The results of the three experiments, taken together, agreed in indicating that prior aversive stimulation increased the suppressing value of subsequent punishment and that there were no appreciable effects of the original aversive stimulation in the absence of punishment. It is concluded that the effects of aversive stimulation are not necessarily restricted to the modality under which they are experienced. IT WAS RECENTLY REPORTED that prior experience with inescapable electric shock results in an increase in resistance to extinction of an acquired-fear response (Kurtz & Pearl, 1960), in greater disruptive effects during an approach-avoidance conflict task (Kurtz & Walters, 1962), and in an increase in the suppressing effects of punishment on unconditioned activity (Pearl, 1963). In all of these studies an attempt was made to study the residual effects of pre-shock, apart from any conditioned emotionality aroused by a specific CS paired with pre-shock, by minimizing the similarity of cues in the treatment and test situations. Moreover, the results of the Kurtz and Pearl (1960) study indicated that stimulus generalization of fear was not an important determinant of the transfer observed. One of the major questions which remained unanswered in this study was whether or not the transfer was dependent solely on the use of a common aversive stimulus in the original treatment and iExperiment I-was abstracted from J.P.'s M.A. thesis directed by K. H. Kurtz at the University of Buffalo; Experiment II was conducted by J.P. at Sterling-Winthrop Research Institute; Experiment III was conducted by G.C.W. and D.C.A. at the University of Portland.
Renewed behavior produced by context change and its implications for treatment maintenance: A review
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2017
Behavioral treatment gains established in one setting do not always maintain in other settings. The present review examines the relevance of basic and translational research to understanding failures to maintain treatment gains across settings. Specifically, studies of the renewal effect examine how transitioning away from a treatment setting could evoke a return of undesirable behavior, rather than newly trained appropriate behavior. Studies of renewal typically arrange three phases, with a response trained and reinforced under a particular set of contextual stimuli in the first phase. Next, that response is extinguished, often under a different set of contextual stimuli. Finally, that response returns despite extinction remaining in effect upon returning to the original training context or transitioning to a novel context. Thus, removing the extinction context is sufficient to produce a recurrence of the response. The findings suggest treatment effects can become specific to the c...
Resistance to Extinction and Relapse in Combined Stimulus Contexts
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2012
Reinforcing an alternative response in the same context as a target response reduces the rate of occurrence but increases the persistence of that target response. Applied researchers who use such techniques to decrease the rate of a target problem behavior risk inadvertently increasing the persistence of the same problem behavior. Behavioral momentum theory asserts that the increased persistence is a function of the alternative reinforcement enhancing the Pavlovian relation between the target stimulus context and reinforcement. A method showing promise for reducing the persistenceenhancing effects of alternative reinforcement is to train the alternative response in a separate stimulus context before combining with the target stimulus in extinction. The present study replicated previous findings using pigeons by showing that combining an ''alternative'' richer VI schedule (96 reinforcers/ hr) with a ''target'' leaner VI schedule (24 reinforcers/hr) reduced resistance to extinction of target responding compared with concurrent training of the alternative and target responses (totaling 120 reinforcers/hr). We also found less relapse with a reinstatement procedure following extinction with separate-context training, supporting previous findings that training conditions similarly influence both resistance to extinction and relapse. Finally, combining the alternative stimulus context was less disruptive to target responding previously trained in the concurrent schedule, relative to combining with the target response trained alone. Overall, the present findings suggest the technique of combining stimulus contexts associated with alternative responses with those associated with target responses disrupts target responding. Furthermore, the effectiveness of this disruption is a function of training context of reinforcement for target responding, consistent with assertions of behavioral momentum theory.
Some Effects of Magnitude of Reinforcement on Persistence of Responding
The Psychological Record
The influence of magnitude of reinforcement was examined on both response rate and behavioral persistence. During Phase 1, a multiple schedule of concurrent reinforcement was implemented in which reinforcement for one response option was held constant at VI 30 s across both components, while magnitude of reinforcement for the other response option was varied across the 2 components.
A reminder of extinction reduces relapse in an animal model of voluntary behavior
Learning & Memory, 2017
One experiment with rats explored whether an extinction-cue prevents the recovery of extinguished lever-pressing responses. Initially, rats were trained to perform one instrumental response (R1) for food in Context A, and a different instrumental response (R2) in Context B. Then, responses were extinguished each in the alternate context (R1 in Context B; R2 in Context A). For one group, extinction of both responses was conducted in the presence of an extinction-cue, whereas in a second group, the extinction-cue only accompanied extinction of R1. During a final test, we observed that returning the rats to the initial acquisition context renewed performance and that response recovery was attenuated in the presence of the cue that accompanied extinction of the response. The impact of the extinction-cue, however, was not transferred to the response that has been extinguished without the cue. Our results are consistent with the idea that extinction established an inhibitory cueresponse association.
The Return of Extinguished Conditioned Behaviour in Humans: New Research and Future Directions
The last five years has seen an explosion of interest in research on the return of extinguished conditioned behaviour in humans. This interest has resulted from the development of theoretical models of the phenomenon from non-human animal research and the potential application that the research has to explaining relapse following extinction-based treatments for psychological disorders. The recent research conducted with human participants is reviewed. The main return of conditioned behaviour phenomena are renewal, reinstatement, spontaneous recovery, and reacquisition, although recent human research has tended to focus on only the first two. Human research has employed three main paradigms in the laboratory: fear conditioning procedures, a conditioned suppression task, and causal learning tasks.