Comments on lerman and iwata (1996).

Smith (1996) wrote a short commentary. It praised a review about why behavior keeps going during extinction. The author urged researchers to test the variables that review listed.

The paper did not run new experiments. It simply endorsed the earlier review and asked the field to study intermittent, delayed, and variable reinforcement schedules.

The commentary found no new data. It stated that future work should check how different reinforcement schedules affect resistance to extinction.

The clear message: use mixed, late, or unpredictable reinforcement if you want behavior to survive periods when reinforcement stops.

Podlesnik et al. (2023) and King et al. (2024) now supersede the 1996 call. Both teams ran full systematic reviews of extinction and resurgence studies. They mapped fifty years of data and showed exactly which procedures change relapse risk.

Jaffe et al. (2002) extends the idea. They tested children with autism and found that switching to continuous reinforcement right before extinction can slightly speed up the drop in problem behavior. This gives clinicians a first real data set on the topic the commentary wanted explored.

Johnston et al. (2017) adds a twist that looks like a contradiction but is not. They showed that rich alternative reinforcement knocks target behavior down fastest, yet it also creates the biggest resurgence when it stops. The 1996 piece never warned about this rebound; it only said rich schedules help behavior survive extinction. The newer study clarifies that survival is a double-edged sword.

You can finally move beyond the 1996 advice. Use intermittent or variable schedules when you need durability, but plan for resurgence if you later remove rich alternative reinforcers. Start thinning those alternatives early and track data longer than you think you need. These updates turn a twenty-five-year-old plea into a concrete, risk-managed protocol you can apply with any client next week.