Resurgence of temporal patterns of responding.
Temporal patterns can resurge just like single responses, so monitor timing when you fade schedules.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with pigeons in a lab. First, birds earned food by pecking a key in a steady rhythm. Then the rule changed. A new rhythm paid off and the old one did not. Finally, all food stopped. The scientists watched to see if the first rhythm would return.
They tracked the exact timing of every peck. The goal was to learn if whole time patterns, not just single pecks, could resurge after extinction.
What they found
When the new rhythm no longer paid off, the birds drifted back to the original timing. The old pattern re-appeared even though it was not reinforced. This shows that resurgence can happen to entire temporal patterns, not just single responses.
How this fits with other research
Kastner et al. (2025) saw the same rebound, but during schedule thinning, not pure extinction. They warn that resurgence is strongest when you slowly thin reinforcement after FCT. Cançado et al. (2011) proves the effect can also occur with simple extinction of timed patterns.
Older work like Julià (1982) and Cicerone (1976) already showed that reinforcement can shape timing. The 2011 study moves the story forward: if you stop reinforcing a new timing, the old timing can pop back up.
Together, these papers tell a clear story. Reinforcement builds temporal habits. Remove that reinforcement and the prior habit resurges, whether it is a single response or a whole rhythm.
Why it matters
If you are thinning a DRL schedule or fading delay tolerance, watch for the old timing to return. A child who learned to wait 30 s might slip back to 5 s when you thin too fast. Probe the old timing after any schedule change. If it resurges, pause the thinning and reinforce the new timing again.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The resurgence of temporal patterns of key pecking by pigeons was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, positively accelerated and linear patterns of responding were established on one key under a discrete-trial multiple fixed-interval variable-interval schedule. Subsequently, only responses on a second key produced reinforcers according to a variable-interval schedule. When reinforcement on the second key was discontinued, positively accelerated and linear response patterns resurged on the first key, in the presence of the stimuli previously correlated with the fixed- and variable-interval schedules, respectively. In Experiment 2, resurgence was assessed after temporal patterns were directly reinforced. Initially, responding was reinforced if it approximated an algorithm-defined temporal pattern during trials. Subsequently, reinforcement depended on pausing during trials and, when it was discontinued, resurgence of previously reinforced patterns occurred for each pigeon and for 2 of 3 pigeons during a replication. The results of both experiments demonstrate the resurgence of temporally organized responding and replicate and extend previous findings on resurgence of discrete responses and spatial response sequences.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2011 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2011.95-271