Evaluating the combined effects of renewal and response‐dependent reinstatement
Accidental rewards after extinction turn a small renewal hiccup into a full comeback.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Kimball et al. (2025) asked what happens when two relapse triggers hit at once.
They compared renewal alone with renewal plus accidental reinforcement.
Adults without disabilities pressed buttons for points in a lab task.
What they found
Relapse was stronger when both triggers happened together.
The extra reinforcement made the old behavior bounce back harder.
How this fits with other research
Podlesnik et al. (2017) warned that changing rooms can restart behavior. Kimball shows the jump gets bigger if someone also hands out reinforcers.
Pritchard et al. (2014) saw the same boost in kids when therapists gave more goodies. The lab result now matches the clinic.
King et al. (2025) review says pick relapse-proof reinforcers. Kimball’s data say even small accidental payoffs can undo your extinction.
Why it matters
Your client moves from the clinic to the playground and suddenly the old problem behavior is back. If a teacher, parent, or peer also gives even tiny rewards for that behavior, relapse doubles. Run your extinction probe in the new setting and watch for accidental praise, tokens, or escape. Stop those extras and renewal loses its punch.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Renewal is a form of treatment relapse that occurs due to a change in context but in the absence of a change in contingencies. Recent prevalence data suggest that renewal may commonly occur in clinical settings, threatening the durability of treatments for decreasing problem behavior. Unfortunately, instances of renewal may also coincide with treatment integrity errors of commission in which the treatment implementer accidentally reinforces the problem behavior. Unplanned reinforcer deliveries for the problem behavior following successful treatment may result in a different form of relapse called response-dependent reinstatement. Little is known about the combined effects of renewal and response-dependent reinstatement. The current study compared the effects of renewal alone with the combined effects of renewal plus response-dependent reinstatement in two experiments. We conducted Experiment 1 in a basic laboratory with rats and Experiment 2 in a translational format with college students who engaged with a task on a touchscreen tablet device. Overall, our results suggest that relapse was worse during combined tests for renewal plus response-dependent reinstatement relative to renewal alone. We discuss the implications of our findings with respect to the treatment of problem behavior.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2025 · doi:10.1002/jeab.70057