Behavior changes during repeated eight-day extinctions.
Long extinction blocks can keep total responses steady while early drops hide late rebounds.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team ran eight-day extinction blocks again and again. First they gave two days of reinforcement. Then they removed it for eight straight days. They did this cycle multiple times.
They counted every response made during each long extinction session. They wanted to see if the total changed across cycles.
What they found
The daily totals stayed flat across cycles. Early in each block, responding dropped. Late in the same block, responding rose again. The two changes cancelled out.
This hints that two forces steer behavior during long extinction. One weakens early responses. The other strengthens late responses.
How this fits with other research
Delini-Stula (1970) saw the same flat line. Rats kept a fever-like response through nine extinction days. Both studies show that long extinction does not always cut totals.
Horner (1971) found a faster way. Reinforcing the absence of the response beat plain extinction. Taken together, pure extinction can drag on, but DRO shortens the haul.
Bachá-Méndez et al. (2007) add a twist. After long extinction, whole response sequences came back. This matches the late-session rise D et al. saw. Extended extinction may set the stage for resurgence.
Why it matters
If you run extinction for a week and see little change, the procedure is not broken. The client may simply be shifting responding later in each session. Track minute-by-minute data to spot the swing. Consider shortening sessions or adding DRO to avoid the late-session spike. Watch for resurgence of old behavior chains once you stop treatment.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pigeons were given repeated two-day conditionings alternating with eight-day extinctions using a trial procedure. One group had different key colors during each of the first five conditioning-extinction pairs; another group had the same key color throughout. Total extinction responses of both groups were quite constant over successive extinctions. This finding differs from the rapid declines found in most previous studies with bar-press and key-peck responses. The difference probably was due to our longer extinctions, because responses early in each extinction did decrease. However, that decrease was neutralized by increases in responses late in each extinction. The two opposite changes indicate the influence of two different factors during repeated extinctions, with neither factor having much stimulus specificity. The reduction of early responses may result from feeding changes confounded with extinction. The increase in later extinction responses may result from a decrease in the effect of unreinforced responses after their repeated occurrence.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1976 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1976.26-181