A nonsequential approach to the study of operant renewal: a reverse translation
Relapse risk stays high even when the old reinforcement context shows up only now and then.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Sullivan et al. (2018) tested a new lab model of relapse.
Instead of the usual A-B-A order, they mixed the baseline context into treatment in a random, nonsequential way.
College students earned points for pressing keys; reinforcement and extinction contexts alternated unpredictably.
What they found
Relapse stayed just as high as in the classic ABA sequence.
Even rare returns to the reinforcement context were enough to keep the old behavior alive.
How this fits with other research
Craig et al. (2019) repeated the setup with rats and saw even stronger relapse, showing the effect holds across species.
Austin et al. (2015) had already shown that any return to the reinforcement context sparks renewal; Sullivan’s team proves you don’t need a tidy sequence for that risk.
Rodriguez-Seijas et al. (2020) twist the idea further: letting reinforcement pop up during extinction can later protect against relapse in brand-new settings, revealing a possible trade-off.
Why it matters
Your client doesn’t need daily visits to the old problem context for relapse to loom. A single party at grandma’s, one trip to the candy aisle, or a random praise burst can keep the extinguished behavior strong. Build plans that assume triggers will appear out of order, teach self-management for mixed settings, and track data after any context shuffle.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
ABA renewal is a model of treatment relapse that describes the recurrence of severe problem behavior when behavior learned in one context (e.g., home; A) and treated in a separate context (e.g., clinic; B) reemerges when the original context is reintroduced (A). However, in the typical environment and during the usual course of treatment for severe problem behavior, the target behavior is exposed to the baseline context periodically (e.g., the child returns home after several hours in a clinic setting). Due to the difficulty of studying what effect this may have on treatment relapse during ABA renewal in a strictly applied investigation, we developed a human-laboratory translation to study renewal in a nonsequential manner. Using undergraduate students as subjects, we directly compared levels of recurrence using the standard ABA renewal procedure and a modified nonsequential ACA procedure, one modeled from the typical course of treatment for problem behavior. Both methods produced renewal at comparable levels, and patterns during nonsequential ACA renewal were similar to those during sequential ABA renewal. We discuss the implications of these findings in the framework of treatment for severe problem behavior.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2018 · doi:10.1002/jeab.456