ACCURATE AND RAPID RECONDITIONING OF SPACED RESPONDING.

The team worked with lab animals on a DRL 20-second schedule.

After the animals learned to wait 20 s between responses, the reinforcers stopped.

Once responding dropped, they gave just two timed rewards to see if the old pattern returned.

Two reinforcers were enough to bring back both the slow response rate and the 20-second spacing.

The animals acted as if the pause had never happened.

Branch et al. (1981) later used the same DRL 20-s rule with three children who had profound ID.

Stereotypy fell and social play rose, showing the lab result extends to real-world clients.

Lattal et al. (2020) found few extinction bursts after intermittent reinforcement.

This supports the quick bounce-back seen here; the pause may be less risky than we thought.

You can restart a DRL schedule without long retraining. After a break, give two carefully timed rewards and the client is back on track. This saves therapy hours and keeps behavior calm.