Quantitative analysis of local-level resurgence

Abstract

Resurgence is the recurrence of a previously reinforced and then extinguished behavior induced by the extinction of another more recently reinforced behavior. Resurgence provides insight into behavioral processes relevant to treatment relapse of a range of problem behaviors. Resurgence is typically studied across three phases: (1) reinforcement of a target response, (2) extinction of the target and concurrent reinforcement of an alternative response, and (3) extinction of the alternative response, resulting in the recurrence of target responding. Because each phase typically occurs successively and spans multiple sessions, extended time frames separate the training and resurgence of target responding. This study assessed resurgence more dynamically and throughout ongoing training in 6 pigeons. Baseline entailed 50-s trials of a freeoperant psychophysical procedure, resembling Phases 1 and 2 of typical resurgence procedures. During the first 25 s, we reinforced target (left-key) responding but not alternative (right-key) responding; contingencies reversed during the second 25 s. Target and alternative responding followed the baseline reinforcement contingencies, with alternative responding replacing target responding across the 50 s. We observed resurgence of target responding during signaled and unsignaled probes that extended trial durations an additional 100 s in extinction. Furthermore, resurgence was greater and/or sooner when probes were signaled, suggesting an important role of discriminating transitions to extinction in resurgence. The data were well described by an extension of a stimulus-control model of discrimination that assumes resurgence is the result of generalization of obtained reinforcers across space and time. Therefore, the present findings introduce novel methods and quantitative analyses for assessing behavioral processes underlying resurgence.

Repeated, within‐session resurgence

“…Such demonstrations of repeated resurgence as those of Kincaid (2015;Kincaid & Lattal, 2018) and Bai et al (2017) expand the conditions under which resurgence can occur. The resurgence (and its controlling variables) that develops under the somewhat idiosyncratic conditions used in both those experiments, however, bear an unknown relation to the more conventional resurgence procedure.…”

“…The procedures used in the three experiments reported here compressed a conventional three‐stage resurgence procedure into a single‐session test of resurgence that could then be repeated to generate resurgence over as many as 30 successive sessions. There have been a few previous reports of within‐session resurgence with nonhuman animals (Bai et al, ; Kincaid, ; Kincaid & Lattal, ), but, as noted in the introduction, the resurgence generated under these conditions bears an unknown relation to that generated by the more conventional, across‐session means of assessing resurgence and its controlling variables. By contrast, not only do the present procedures precisely parallel, within individual sessions, the conventional procedure, the results replicate the appearance of resurgence with both fixed‐ and variable‐interval schedules (cf.…”

“…Two recent experiments have examined resurgence within and across successive sessions. Kincaid (2015;see Kincaid and Lattal, 2018) and Bai, Cowie, and Podlesnik (2017) investigated within-session resurgence using, respectively, a progressive-ratio schedule and a free-operant psychophysical procedure (FOPP). With both procedures, resurgence developed within individual sessions and the effect was repeated across at least a few successive sessions.…”

Resurgence as Choice

“…However, it is worth noting that Bai et al (2016) have attempted to begin to quantify some aspects of the context approach with respect to resurgence under limited conditions. Full development of a more general quantitative version of Context Theory might lead to a more viable version of the account.…”

“…Thus, with a higher p parameter, non-contingent reinforcers would have less of a response-rate reducing effect, because in effect they are serving as R 1 . A similar reinforcer misallocation approach has been proposed in more general Matching-Law based theories to account for two or more explicitly defined choice responses (e.g., Davison and Jenkins, 1985; see Davison and Nevin, 1999, for review), and has been employed by Bai et al (2016) to account for “local-level resurgence” in a free-operant psychophysical procedure. One approach to begin incorporating such a misallocation process into RaC could be to include a similar p parameter into the calculations of reinforcement rates in Eq.…”