Basic and translational evaluation of renewal of operant responding.
Renewal can undo perfect extinction the moment the client returns to the old context, so plan for multiple settings.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Austin et al. (2015) tested whether perfect extinction can still fail. They first taught children with autism to press a button for toys in one room. Then they moved the kids to a new room and stopped giving toys. When the kids stopped pressing, they brought them back to the first room.
The team wanted to see if the old room would bring the button-pressing back even though the toys were still gone.
What they found
The old room instantly brought the button-pressing back. The behavior had been gone, but the context alone made it return. This shows renewal can beat perfect treatment.
How this fits with other research
Craig et al. (2019) later showed that flipping between rooms every day makes relapse even worse than the classic ABA sequence E used. Sullivan et al. (2018) found the same risk holds when adults just visit the old room now and then.
Liddon et al. (2018) added that one person can show both ABA and ABC renewal, so you need to plan for many context shifts, not just one. Rodriguez-Seijas et al. (2020) then gave hope: letting kids briefly touch the old reinforcing room during treatment cuts later ABC renewal.
Why it matters
Your extinction program is not finished when the behavior stops in your therapy room. Map every place the behavior used to pay off — home, cafeteria, grandpa’s car. Either do extinction in each spot or teach the child to ask for help when the old cue hits. Build renewal probes into your discharge plan: return trips to the original context with safety nets ready.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Treatment relapse, defined as the reemergence of problem behavior after treatment, is a serious difficulty faced by clinicians. Failures of treatment integrity (i.e., failure to implement interventions as intended) are often invoked to explain the reemergence of problem behavior. Basic studies suggest that the prevailing stimulus context might also contribute. We conducted 2 experiments in which reinforcement for a target response was followed by 2 phases of extinction with different or identical stimulus contexts relative to baseline (ABA renewal). In Experiment 1, pigeons served as subjects using procedures typical of those used in basic behavioral research. Experiment 2 was designed as a translational replication of Experiment 1, and children who had been diagnosed with autism served as participants. Returning to the previously reinforced stimulus context in both species produced a clear and immediate increase of extinguished responding. These findings are consistent with previous studies that have suggested that both reinforcement contingencies and stimulus context influence the reemergence of extinguished behavior.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2015 · doi:10.1002/jaba.209