Stimulus contributions to operant resurgence
Keep stimuli the same and resurgence grows; change them and it shrinks.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Nighbor and team ran a three-phase lab study on resurgence. First they taught a simple response for food. Then they stopped paying for that response and paid a new one instead. Finally they stopped paying for anything and watched if the first response came back.
Across conditions they kept or swapped the lights, tones, and room cues. The goal was to see if familiar stimuli make the old response return stronger.
What they found
When the sights and sounds stayed the same from start to finish, the old response surged back. When the stimuli changed between phases, the surge shrank. Same room, same lights, same sounds equals bigger resurgence.
How this fits with other research
Hanley et al. (1997) removed the adult contingent on SIB and saw the behavior drop. Their move matches Nighbor: take away the cue that was present during reinforcement and extinction works better.
Okouchi et al. (2014) showed that remote history can pop up under new but similar stimuli. Nighbor sharpens that idea: the more similar the context, the bigger the pop.
Donahoe et al. (2000) used brief extinction probes to tell satiation from true extinction. Nighbor uses the same probe logic to isolate how much of resurgence is stimulus-driven.
Why it matters
If you keep the therapy room, staff, and materials the same while you fade reinforcement, you risk a comeback of the old problem. Swap or enrich the context when you start extinction. Add a new wall color, move seats, or change the therapist. One simple switch can cut the size of a future burst.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In two experiments, pigeons were exposed to a three-phase resurgence procedure (train Response A; extinguish Response A and train Response B; extinguish Response B). In the first experiment, the stimuli associated with phases were different, resulting in a resurgence procedure combined with an ABC renewal procedure. Presenting the novel stimulus, C, during extinction of both responses in the third phase resulted in minimal resurgence. Subsequently, substituting the original training Stimulus A for Stimulus C resulted in resurgence with all pigeons. In the second experiment, resurgence with the same stimuli present in all three phases of the resurgence procedure (AAA) was compared concurrently with a resurgence procedure in which the ABC renewal procedure used in Experiment 1 was superimposed. Substantially more resurgence occurred with the AAA procedure compared to the ABC procedure. Although ABC renewal in combination with the resurgence procedure generated some resurgence, such recurrent responding was attenuated relative to that observed when the stimulus conditions were constant across phases. Combined with earlier research showing the enhancing effects of combining resurgence and ABA renewal procedures, the present results elaborate on how stimuli correlated with certain behavioral histories affect the course of operant resurgence.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2018 · doi:10.1002/jeab.463