Responding maintained by intermittent reinforcement: implications for the use of extinction with problem behavior in clinical settings.
Extinction works just as fast after intermittent reinforcement, and a quick taste of continuous reinforcement first can shrink the burst.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with adults with intellectual disability who had long-standing problem behavior.
Each person first got continuous reinforcement (every response worked). Then they got intermittent reinforcement (only some responses worked).
After each schedule the staff used extinction. They timed how fast the behavior stopped under both conditions.
What they found
Extinction took the same time whether the behavior had been on continuous or intermittent reinforcement.
Giving a short run of continuous reinforcement right before extinction lowered the baseline level and made the first extinction burst smaller.
The old worry that intermittent reinforcement makes behavior harder to stop was not supported.
How this fits with other research
Lattal et al. (2020) saw the same thing in pigeons and rats: intermittent histories did not slow extinction and bursts were rare.
Woodford et al. (2024) now puts extinction last in sleep plans, matching the idea that you can wait and use milder steps first.
Nevin et al. (2016) adds a twist: lean signaled DRA plus extinction cuts later relapse, so pairing a thin schedule with a signal may help after all.
Why it matters
You no longer need to fear that thinning a schedule will lock problem behavior in place. Feel free to move to intermittent reinforcement when it helps the client or fits the setting. If you want an easier start, give a brief stretch of continuous reinforcement right before you begin extinction; it softens the first burst and keeps rates low.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Results of basic research have demonstrated that behavior maintained on an intermittent schedule of reinforcement (INT) will be extinguished more slowly than behavior maintained on a continuous schedule (CRF). Although these findings suggest that problem behaviors may be difficult to treat with extinction if they have been maintained on INT rather than on CRF schedules, few applied studies have examined this phenomenon with human behavior in clinical settings. The purpose of this study was to determine whether problem behavior maintained on CRF schedules would be extinguished more rapidly than behavior maintained on INT schedules. Three individuals diagnosed with profound mental retardation participated after results of pretreatment functional analyses had identified the sources of reinforcement that were maintaining their self-injury, aggression, or disruption. Subjects were exposed to extinction following baseline conditions with CRF or INT schedules alternated within reversal or multielement designs. Results suggested that problem behavior may not be more difficult to treat with extinction if they have been maintained on INT rather than CRF schedules. However, switching from an INT to a CRF schedule prior to extinction may lower the baseline response rate as well as the total number of responses exhibited during extinction.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1996 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1996.29-153