Resistance to extinction and relapse in combined stimulus contexts.
Teach the replacement skill in a new spot before you try to stop the problem behavior in the old spot.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with pigeons in three small chambers. First, they taught the birds to peck one key for food in Chamber A. Next, they moved each bird to Chamber B and taught a new key peck that also earned food.
Finally, they put the bird back in Chamber A and stopped all food. They watched how long the old pecking lasted and how often it came back later.
What they found
Birds that learned the new food key in a separate room gave up the old peck faster. When tested later, the old peck also returned less often.
Training the new skill in a different place acted like a shield. It made the problem behavior weaker and less likely to bounce back.
How this fits with other research
Ferrari et al. (1991) and LeFrancois et al. (1993) first showed that pigeons treat each chamber as its own world. The 2012 study used that idea and added a twist: teach the good behavior in a new world before facing the old one.
Hopkins et al. (1977) worked with children and found that thinning rewards in one place while adding free rewards in another helped skills last. The pigeon study flips this logic. It uses a new place to make the old problem easier to stop, not to keep a new skill going.
Thomas et al. (1988) warned that mixing reinforcers can make behavior stick too long. The 2012 paper shows a safer path. Instead of changing the reward, change the room where the new skill is taught.
Why it matters
If a child hits the desk for iPad time, teach a new request like tapping a card in a quiet corner first. Only then bring that skill back to the desk area. This small move can make the hitting fade faster and stay gone longer.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Reinforcing an alternative response in the same context as a target response reduces the rate of occurrence but increases the persistence of that target response. Applied researchers who use such techniques to decrease the rate of a target problem behavior risk inadvertently increasing the persistence of the same problem behavior. Behavioral momentum theory asserts that the increased persistence is a function of the alternative reinforcement enhancing the Pavlovian relation between the target stimulus context and reinforcement. A method showing promise for reducing the persistence-enhancing effects of alternative reinforcement is to train the alternative response in a separate stimulus context before combining with the target stimulus in extinction. The present study replicated previous findings using pigeons by showing that combining an "alternative" richer VI schedule (96 reinforcers/hr) with a "target" leaner VI schedule (24 reinforcers/hr) reduced resistance to extinction of target responding compared with concurrent training of the alternative and target responses (totaling 120 reinforcers/hr). We also found less relapse with a reinstatement procedure following extinction with separate-context training, supporting previous findings that training conditions similarly influence both resistance to extinction and relapse. Finally, combining the alternative stimulus context was less disruptive to target responding previously trained in the concurrent schedule, relative to combining with the target response trained alone. Overall, the present findings suggest the technique of combining stimulus contexts associated with alternative responses with those associated with target responses disrupts target responding. Furthermore, the effectiveness of this disruption is a function of training context of reinforcement for target responding, consistent with assertions of behavioral momentum theory.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2012 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2012.98-169