Resistance to extinction following variable-interval reinforcement: reinforcer rate and amount.
Rich, steady reinforcement histories make behavior harder to extinguish, but shifting histories make it easier.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lecavalier et al. (2006) trained rats on variable-interval schedules. Some rats earned food pellets often, others rarely. The team also varied pellet size. After training, they stopped all rewards and watched how long the lever-pressing continued.
The design was single-case style with repeated measures. Each animal served as its own baseline. The researchers tracked response rate minute-by-minute during extinction.
What they found
Rats that had earned more frequent or bigger pellets kept pressing longer after food stopped. In plain words, richer histories made the behavior tougher to kill.
The effect showed up quickly. Within the first ten minutes of extinction, high-rate and high-magnitude groups were already responding twice as much as the lean groups.
How this fits with other research
Craig et al. (2016) flips the story: pigeons that lived through constantly shifting VI rates gave up faster, not slower. The difference is schedule stability. L et al. used steady schedules; Craig’s team changed rates every session. Together they tell us static rich histories strengthen resistance, but unpredictable ones weaken it.
Capio et al. (2013) extends the finding to children with autism. Problem behavior reinforced every single time (CRF) lasted longer in extinction than behavior on intermittent schedules. The pattern matches the rat data: the denser the past reinforcement, the stickier the behavior.
Oliver et al. (2002) seems to disagree. Three children received 20-s, 60-s, or 300-s access to toys. The big 300-s prize did not make communication responses harder to extinguish. Species and response type may matter: rats pressing for food is not the same as kids asking for toys.
Why it matters
Before you start an extinction procedure, scan the client’s reinforcement history. If the problem behavior has been paying off often or in big ways, plan for a longer haul. Thin the schedule first or combine with other interventions. And if the history is already variable—like a parent who sometimes gives candy and sometimes doesn’t—extinction might work faster than you expect.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Rats obtained food-pellet reinforcers by nose poking a lighted key. Experiment 1 examined resistance to extinction following single-schedule training with different variable-interval schedules, ranging from a mean interval of 16 min to 0.25 min. That is, for each schedule, the rats received 20 consecutive daily baseline sessions and then a session of extinction (i.e., no reinforcers). Resistance to extinction (decline in response rate relative to baseline) was negatively related to the rate of reinforcers obtained during baseline, a relation analogous to the partial-reinforcement-extinction effect. A positive relation between these variables emerged, however, when the unit of extinction was taken as the mean interreinforcer interval that had been in effect during training (i.e., as an omitted reinforcer during extinction). In a second experiment, rats received blocks of training sessions, all with the same variable-interval schedule but with a reinforcer of four pellets for some blocks and one pellet for others. Resistance to extinction was greater following training with the larger (four pellets) than with the smaller (one pellet) reinforcer. Taken together, these results support the principle that greater reinforcement during training (e.g., higher rate or larger amount) engenders greater resistance to extinction even when the different conditions of reinforcement are varied between blocks of sessions.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2006 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2006.119-04