The extinction burst: Effects of reinforcement magnitude.

The extinction burst is an increase in an operant behavior early in the transition to extinction. A matching-law-based quantitative theory suggests that it results from the elimination of competition from reinforcement-related behavior that accompanies the transition to extinction. This experiment examined the effects of reinforcement magnitude on the extinction burst with rats.

Resurgence mitigation across extended extinction following four and eight cycles of on/off alternative reinforcement.

Resurgence is an increase in an extinguished operant response resulting from a worsening of conditions (e.g., extinction) for a more recently reinforced alternative behavior.

Resurgence of destructive behavior following decreases in alternative reinforcement: A prospective analysis.

Basic and retrospective translational research has shown that the magnitude of resurgence is determined by the size of the decrease in alternative reinforcement, with larger decreases producing more resurgence. However, this finding has not been evaluated prospectively with a clinical population. In Experiment 1, five participants experienced a fixed progression of reinforcement schedule-thinning steps during treatment of their destructive behavior.

How do animals weigh conflicting information about reward sources over time? Comparing dynamic averaging models.

Optimal foraging theory suggests that animals make decisions which maximize their food intake per unit time when foraging, but the mechanisms animals use to track the value of behavioral alternatives and choose between them remain unclear. Several models for how animals integrate past experience have been suggested. However, these models make differential predictions for the occurrence of spontaneous recovery of choice: a behavioral phenomenon in which a hiatus from the experimental environment results in animals reverting to a behavioral allocation consistent with a reward distribution from the more distant past, rather than one consistent with their most recently experienced distribution.

Resurgence Following Higher or Lower Quality Alternative Reinforcement.

Resurgence is a temporary increase in a previously suppressed target behavior following a worsening in reinforcement conditions. Previous studies have examined how higher rates or magnitudes of alternative reinforcement affect suppression of the target behavior and subsequent resurgence. However, there has been no investigation of the effects of higher versus lower qualities of alternative reinforcement on resurgence.

Ketamine produces no detectable long-term positive or negative effects on cognitive flexibility or reinforcement learning of male rats.

Rationale: Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) often experience abnormalities in behavioral adaptation following environmental changes (i.e., cognitive flexibility) and tend to undervalue positive outcomes but overvalue negative outcomes.

Examining resurgence in rats following expanded-operant treatments.

Resurgence of previously reinforced behavior represents a challenge to otherwise successful interventions based on differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA). Expanded-operant treatments seek to increase the number of functional alternative behaviors through DRA, thereby potentially mitigating resurgence. However, the few studies that have directly examined these methods as a tool for resurgence mitigation have provided limited and unclear results.

Aversive control versus stimulus control by punishment.

Estes (1944) reported that adding electric shock punishment to extinction hastened response suppression but that responding increased when shock was removed. This result contributed to a view that reinforcement and punishment are asymmetrical processes because punishment has only indirect and temporary suppressive effects. Azrin and Holz (1966) suggested the result might be interpreted instead as shock serving as a discriminative stimulus for the absence of reinforcement.

A Theory of the Extinction Burst.

A preliminary theory of a temporary increase in the rate of an operant response with the transition to extinction (i.e., the extinction burst) is proposed.

Further evaluation of treatment duration on the resurgence of destructive behavior.

Translation of promising procedures for mitigating treatment relapse has received considerable attention recently from researchers across the basic-applied continuum. One procedure that has demonstrated mixed support involves increasing the duration of treatment as a strategy for blunting resurgence. In a recent translational study, Greer et al.

Basic and applied research on extinction bursts.

Discontinuation of the contingency between a response and its reinforcer sometimes produces a temporary increase in the response before its rate decreases, a phenomenon called the extinction burst. Prior clinical and basic studies on the prevalence of the extinction burst provide highly disparate estimates. Existing theories on the extinction burst fail to account for the dynamic nature of this phenomenon, and the basic behavioral processes that control response bursting remain poorly understood.

Nondrug reinforcers contingent on alternative behavior or abstinence increase resistance to extinction and reinstatement of ethanol-maintained behavior.

The effects of delivering nondrug alternative reinforcement on resistance to extinction and reinstatement of rats' ethanol-maintained lever pressing were evaluated in two experiments. In both, rats self-administered ethanol by lever pressing in a two-component multiple schedule during baseline. In the Rich component, alternative food reinforcement was made available for performing an alternative response (Experiment 1) or according to a differential-reinforcement-of-other-behavior schedule for lever pressing (Experiment 2).

Effects of repeated exposure to escalating versus constant punishment intensity on response allocation.

The present experiment investigated the effects of 1) repeated exposures to escalating punishment intensities and 2) repeated exposure to punishment after periods of vacation on response allocation between punished and unpunished responding in three groups of rats. The first group (intensity + vacation) experienced repeated exposures to escalating punishment intensities after a period of vacation (i.e.

The effects of large, small, and thinning magnitudes of alternative reinforcement on resurgence.

Resurgence refers to an increase of a previously reinforced target behavior following the worsening of conditions for a more recently reinforced alternative behavior. There is evidence to suggest that alternative reinforcers of greater magnitude are more effective at reducing target responding but may also result in more resurgence when removed. Similar effects have been observed with high rates of alternative reinforcement.

Resurgence Following Traditional and Interdependent Differential Reinforcement of Alternative Behavior.

Clinicians frequently prescribe functional communication training (FCT) as a treatment for severe destructive behavior. Recent research has shown that FCT treatments are susceptible to treatment relapse in the form of resurgence of destructive behavior when individuals contact periods in which reinforcers are unavailable. Results of preliminary studies suggest that teaching multiple response alternatives can mitigate the resurgence of target behavior.

The extinction burst: Impact of reinforcement time and level of analysis on measured prevalence.

Despite widespread belief in the extinction burst as a common occurrence, relatively little empirical work has focused directly on the phenomenon. In order to provide additional data on the topic, we report reanalyses of published extinction-control groups from our laboratory following training with a variety of schedules and reinforcers. In addition, two prospective experiments were conducted in which rats responded for food on FR 5 or FR 1 schedules prior to a within-session transition to extinction.

Destructive behavior increases as a function of reductions in alternative reinforcement during schedule thinning: A retrospective quantitative analysis.

The behavioral processes determining the magnitude of the resurgence of destructive behavior during reinforcement schedule thinning have yet to be described, despite an uptick in prevalence research on the topic. As predicted by Resurgence as Choice theory, recent animal research has found that resurgence increases with the magnitude of a downshift in alternative reinforcement. Here we reanalyze the data from 2 recent prevalence studies to determine whether the size of the decrease in alternative reinforcement availability predicts the magnitude of resurgence in the clinic.

Resurgence of alcohol seeking following abstinence induced by punishment in male and female rats.

To better approximate the human condition, animal models of relapse to drug and alcohol seeking have increasingly employed negative consequences to generate abstinence. Here we report the first demonstration of relapse to punishment-suppressed alcohol seeking induced by loss of non-drug reward (i.e.

Examination of alternative-response discrimination training and resurgence in rats.

Resurgence is an increase in a previously reinforced behavior following a worsening of conditions for a more recently reinforced behavior. Discrimination training is incorporated into treatment for problem behavior to prevent treatment adherence failures that may result in resurgence. There is evidence that resurgence may be reduced when a stimulus that signals alternative-response extinction is present compared with absent; however, the generality of this effect is unknown given the limited testing conditions.

Resurgence and repeated within-session progressive-interval thinning of alternative reinforcement.

Resurgence of a previously suppressed target behavior is common when reinforcement for a more recently reinforced alternative behavior is thinned. To better characterize such resurgence, these experiments examined repeated within-session alternative reinforcement thinning using a progressive-interval (PI) schedule with rats. In Experiment 1, a transition from a high rate of alternative reinforcement to a within-session PI schedule generated robust resurgence, but subsequent complete removal of alternative reinforcement produced no additional resurgence.

Punishment and its putative fallout: A reappraisal.

In his book Coercion and Its Fallout Murray Sidman argued against the use of punishment based on concerns about its shortcomings and side effects. Among his concerns were the temporary nature of response suppression produced by punishment, the dangers of conditioned punishment, increases in escape and avoidance responses, punishment-induced aggression, and the development of countercontrol. This paper revisits Sidman's arguments about these putative shortcomings and side effects by examining the available data.

Resurgence and downshifts in alternative reinforcement rate.

Resurgence refers to an increase in a previously suppressed target behavior with a relative worsening of conditions for a more recently reinforced alternative behavior. This experiment examined the relation between resurgence and the magnitude of a reduction in the rate of reinforcement for the alternative behavior. Groups of both male and female rats initially pressed a target lever for food on a variable-interval (VI) 30-s schedule.

Delays to food-predictive stimuli do not affect suboptimal choice in rats.

A variety of animals sometimes engage in a form of maladaptive decision-making characterized by repeatedly choosing an option providing food-predictive stimuli even though they earn less food for doing so. The temporal information-theoretic model suggests that such suboptimal choice depends on competition between the bits of temporal information conveyed by food-predictive stimuli (which encourages suboptimal choice) and the rate of food delivery (which encourages optimal choice). The model assumes that competition between these two sources of control is based on the ratio of the delay to food () and the delay to food-predictive stimuli () at the choice point (i.