A Comprehensive Systematic Review of Procedures and Analyses Used in Basic and Preclinical Studies of Resurgence, 1970–2020
Basic studies show sudden reinforcement loss drives relapse, so clinicians should thin gradually and probe repeatedly.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Podlesnik et al. (2023) read every basic resurgence paper from 1970 to 2020.
They found 200 lab studies, mostly with pigeons or rats, and wrote down how each one was run.
The team looked at how reinforcement was given, how it was removed, and how relapse was tested.
What they found
Almost every study used single-subject designs and simple extinction tests.
Few tried punishment or slow thinning of reinforcement.
The review shows big gaps you can borrow from when you fight resurgence in clinic.
How this fits with other research
Greer et al. (2024) tested kids and saw the same pattern: big early drops in reinforcement cause the biggest relapse.
Kestner et al. (2018) warn that resurgence shrinks when you repeat extinction tests — a point the basic papers rarely check.
Fisher et al. (2019) found higher baseline rates during FCT bring more resurgence, matching the lab data Podlesnik mapped.
Together the papers say: thin gradually, watch repeated probes, and plan for relapse even after good FCT.
Why it matters
You can stop guessing about relapse. Use slow thinning first, not sudden extinction. Track data across repeated probes because the first relapse may not be the worst. If you run FCT, keep baseline reinforcement lean from the start. These steps cut resurgence before it hurts your client.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Resurgence is the return of a previously reinforced response as conditions worsen for an alternative response, such as the introduction of extinction, reductions in reinforcement, or punishment. As a procedure, resurgence has been used to model behavioral treatments and understand behavioral processes contributing both to relapse of problem behavior and flexibility during problem-solving. Identifying existing procedural and analytic methods arranged in basic/preclinical research could be used by basic and preclinical researchers to develop novel approaches to study resurgence, whereas translational and clinical researchers could identify potential approaches to combating relapse during behavioral interventions. Despite the study of resurgence for over half a century, there have been no systematic reviews of the basic/preclinical research on resurgence. To characterize the procedural and analytic methods used in basic/preclinical research on resurgence, we performed a systematic review consistent with PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). We identified 120 articles consisting of 200 experiments that presented novel empirical research, examined operant behavior, and included standard elements of a resurgence procedure. We reported prevalence and trends in over 60 categories, including participant characteristics (e.g., species, sample size, disability), designs (e.g., single subject, group), procedural characteristics (e.g., responses, reinforcer types, control conditions), criteria defining resurgence (e.g., single test, multiple tests, relative to control), and analytic strategies (e.g., inferential statistics, quantitative analysis, visual inspection). We make some recommendations for future basic, preclinical, and clinical research based on our findings of this expanding literature. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40614-022-00361-y.
Perspectives on Behavior Science, 2023 · doi:10.1007/s40614-022-00361-y