Number and time in acquisition, extinction and recovery
Spread teaching across more days to cut later resurgence, even when trial count stays the same.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Gallistel et al. (2020) worked with mice in a lab.
They asked: does spreading lessons across days change how fast mice learn and how much behavior comes back later?
All mice got the same number of trials, only the calendar changed.
What they found
Mice that trained on fewer, spread-out days learned faster.
The same mice also showed less return of old behavior after extinction.
Episode timing, not trial count, drove both results.
How this fits with other research
Ritchey et al. (2021) repeated the idea with humans swiping on a screen.
Longer training history there made resurgence bigger, matching the mouse data.
Arroyo Antúñez et al. (2026) later showed big alternative reinforcers cut behavior fast but later rebound harder.
Together the papers say: stretch the teaching calendar and keep alternative reinforcers small to keep relapse low.
Why it matters
You can plan better by looking at the calendar, not just the trial sheet.
If a client masters a skill in one packed week, expect more resurgence later.
Instead, run the same trials across two or three weeks and watch relapse drop.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We measured rate of acquisition, trials to extinction, cumulative responses in extinction, and the spontaneous recovery of anticipatory hopper poking in a Pavlovian protocol with mouse subjects. We varied by factors of 4 number of sessions, trials per session, intersession interval, and span of training (number of days over which training extended). We find that different variables affect each measure: Rate of acquisition [1/(trials to acquisition)] is faster when there are fewer trials per session. Terminal rate of responding is faster when there are more total training trials. Trials to extinction and amount of responding during extinction are unaffected by these variables. The number of training trials has no effect on recovery in a 4-trial probe session 21 days after extinction. However, recovery is greater when the span of training is greater, regardless of how many sessions there are within that span. Our results and those of others suggest that the numbers and durations and spacings of longer-duration "episodes" in a conditioning protocol (sessions and the spans in days of training and extinction) are important variables and that different variables affect different aspects of subjects' behavior. We discuss the theoretical and clinical implications of these and related findings and conclusions-for theories of conditioning and for neuroscience.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2020 · doi:10.1002/jeab.571