The effects of discriminative stimuli on combined relapse: A preliminary human‐operant investigation
A bright cue during extinction blocks the extra relapse that hits when you remove alternative reinforcement and change the room at the same time.
01Research in Context
What this study did
King et al. (2026) asked a simple question. What happens when you lose both your new reward and your familiar room at the same time? They paired a clear cue with extinction to see if it could stop the double relapse.
Adults without disabilities pressed buttons for points. First they earned points for one button. Then they got new points for a second button while the first one stopped paying. Finally both reward streams ended and the room changed. Half the sessions added a bright discriminative stimulus during extinction.
What they found
The cue worked. When the bright signal was present, most people showed little resurgence of the old button pressing. Without the cue, old and new responses bounced back together.
The study showed that a simple visual stimulus can guard extinction against the one-two punch of reinforcement loss plus context change.
How this fits with other research
Craig et al. (2018) already showed that moving DRA to its own room cuts relapse in half. King adds a cue right in the extinction room and gets a similar shield, so you now have two places to act: change the context or signal the silence.
Bland et al. (2016) looks like the opposite team. They found that signaling when DRA is available makes problem behavior harder to kill later. The twist: they signaled reinforcement, King signaled extinction. Same tool, different message, opposite outcomes. Signal the pay-off and you strengthen persistence; signal the cut-off and you protect gains.
Corrigan et al. (1998) used SDs to tell clients which reinforcer was working during FCT. King stretches that idea into the relapse zone, showing the cue can keep extinction solid even when the rug is pulled out.
Why it matters
You can now guard against the worst-case relapse scenario with a cheap visual cue. Before you fade DRA, pick a salient stimulus—colored card, bracelet, lamp—and keep it present during all extinction trials. Leave it there while you thin reinforcement and while you shift rooms. One consistent signal tells the client "reinforcement is off," cutting the bounce-back you usually see when both the reward and the setting change.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Decreases in alternative reinforcement and context changes are events that can lead to resurgence and renewal, respectively. Those stimulus conditions are often investigated in isolation within three-phase arrangements. Recently, studies have examined whether combined decreases in alternative reinforcement and context changes in Phase 3 produce a relapse magnitude different from the summed effects of each change in isolation. In the present study, we examined whether discriminative stimuli, paired with target response extinction in Phase 2, would mitigate resurgence when both stimulus changes occurred simultaneously in Phase 3. We used a within-subjects design and exposed 11 typically developing adults to four, three-phase arrangements in a randomized sequence: ABB− (resurgence in isolation), ABA+ (renewal in isolation), ABA− (resurgence and renewal), and ABA−SΔ. Results indicated that the combined decrease in alternative reinforcement and context change in Phase 3 had a superadditive effect in five participants and an additive effect in four participants, and that the discriminative stimulus significantly attenuated these interaction effects for a majority of participants. These results are further discussed in terms of stimulus control tactics for mitigating resurgence produced by contingency and context and changes, and future research on the topic of combined relapse broadly.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2026 · doi:10.1002/jeab.70080