Further evaluation of a nonsequential approach to studying operant renewal
Flipping daily between reinforced and extinction rooms fuels stronger relapse than the old ABA sequence.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Craig et al. (2019) worked with rats to test a new way of studying relapse. Instead of the usual ABA sequence, they switched the animals back and forth every day between the place where the behavior still paid off and the place where it no longer did.
The team wanted to know if this daily flip-flop would trigger more renewal than the classic ABA design.
What they found
The rats showed stronger relapse when contexts alternated daily than when they followed the straight ABA path. The nonsequential shuffle made the old behavior bounce back harder.
How this fits with other research
Sullivan et al. (2018) ran a similar shuffle with college students and saw no extra renewal. The rat result looks like a contradiction, but the difference is the subject: rats versus humans. The procedure itself stays risky across species.
Storch et al. (2012) found that teaching an alternative response in a separate room before mixing contexts cut relapse in pigeons. Craig’s team flipped contexts daily instead of pre-training elsewhere, and relapse grew, lining up with the idea that messy context exposure strengthens the old response.
Oliver et al. (2018) showed that resurgence jumps when the new reinforcer shrinks. Craig’s work adds another layer: even without changing reinforcer size, simply hopping between reinforced and extinction settings can pump renewal back up.
Why it matters
If you run extinction in one room and later let the client briefly return to the reinforced room, you may be accidentally building a bigger relapse. Keep the treatment setting consistent until the behavior is rock-solid. When you must change rooms, plan extra booster sessions and watch for spikes during the first few swaps.
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Pick one primary treatment room and stay there until mastery; if you must rotate, add probe trials and prepare for renewal spikes.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Basic-laboratory assessments of renewal may inform clinical efforts to maintain reduction of severe destructive behavior when clients transition between contexts. The contextual changes arranged during standard renewal procedures, however, do not necessarily align with those that clients experience during outpatient therapy. More specifically, clients transition between clinical (associated with extinction for target behavior) and home/community (associated with reinforcement for target behavior) contexts during outpatient treatment. Standard renewal assessments do not incorporate these contextual alternations during treatment. The present experiment aimed to directly compare renewal of rats' lever pressing following a standard ("sequential") ABA renewal procedure (i.e., baseline in Context A, extinction in Context B, renewal test in Context A) and a "nonsequential" renewal assessment wherein treatment consisted of daily alternation between Context A (associated with reinforcement for lever pressing) and Context B (associated with extinction). Lever pressing renewed to a greater extent for rats in the Nonsequential group than for rats in the Sequential group, suggesting the contextual changes that clients experience during outpatient treatment for severe destructive behavior may be a variable that is important to consider in translational research on renewal. Potential implications of these findings for basic and clinical research on renewal are discussed.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2019 · doi:10.1002/jeab.546