Extinction of responding maintained by timeout from avoidance.
Behaviors kept alive by escape or timeout can outlast the very thing the client is trying to escape.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with lab rats that pressed a lever to earn a break from mild shock. The rats first learned to avoid shock by pressing. Then the shock was turned off, but the lever still produced a short timeout from the task.
The researchers watched how long the rats kept pressing after the shock was gone. They wanted to see if the timeout-maintained behavior would fade quickly or stick around.
What they found
The rats kept pressing for more than twenty sessions even though shock never returned. The timeout break alone kept the behavior alive.
This shows that escape-maintained behaviors can be stubborn. Removing the main threat is not enough to stop them.
How this fits with other research
Hirota (1971) first showed that animals work to avoid timeout. Bell (1999) now shows the flip side: once that behavior starts, it is hard to stop.
Chandler et al. (1992) found that the rest from effort, not just fewer shocks, keeps timeout responding strong. This helps explain why extinction took so long in Bell (1999).
Rose et al. (2000) later saw the same persistence in pigeons. Together these studies tell a clear story: timeout avoidance is powerful and durable across species.
Why it matters
If you are trying to reduce escape-maintained problem behavior, plan for a long haul. Simply removing the aversive event may not be enough. Add extra supports like escape extinction or differential reinforcement to speed the fade-out. Track data for several weeks before deciding the plan is not working.
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Join Free →Pair extinction with escape extinction: do not let the client leave the task after the problem behavior, even during a brief timeout.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The resistance to extinction of lever pressing maintained by timeout from avoidance was examined. Rats were trained under a concurrent schedule in which responses on one lever postponed shock on a free-operant avoidance (Sidman) schedule (response-shock interval = 30 s) and responses on another lever produced 2 min of signaled timeout from avoidance on a variable-ratio 15 schedule. Following extended training (106 to 363 2-hr sessions), two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1 two different methods of extinction were compared. In one session, all shocks were omitted, and there was some weakening of avoidance but little change in timeout responding. In another session, responding on the timeout lever was ineffective, and under these conditions timeout responding showed rapid extinction. The within-session patterns produced by extinction manipulations were different than the effects of drugs such as morphine, which also reduces timeout responding. In Experiment 2 shock was omitted for many consecutive sessions. Response rates on the avoidance lever declined relatively rapidly, with noticeable reductions within 5 to 10 sessions. Extinction of the timeout lever response was much slower than extinction of avoidance in all 4 rats, and 2 rats continued responding at baseline levels for more than 20 extinction sessions. These results show that lever pressing maintained by negative reinforcement can be highly resistant to extinction. The persistence of responding on the timeout lever after avoidance extinction is not readily explained by current theories.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1999 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1999.71-1