Extinction of chained instrumental behaviors: Effects of procurement extinction on consumption responding.

Abstract

Instrumental behavior often consists of sequences or chains of responses that minimally include procurement behaviors that enable subsequent consumption behaviors. In such chains, behavioral units are linked by access to one another and eventually to a primary reinforcer, such as food or a drug. The present experiments examined the effects of extinguishing procurement responding on consumption responding after training of a discriminated heterogeneous instrumental chain. Rats learned to make a procurement response (e.g., pressing a lever) in the presence of a distinctive discriminative stimulus; making that response led to the presentation of a second discriminative stimulus that set the occasion for a consumption response (e.g., pulling a chain), which then produced a food-pellet reinforcer. Experiment 1 showed that extinction of either the full procurement-consumption chain or procurement alone weakened the consumption response tested in isolation. Experiment 2 replicated the procurement extinction effect and further demonstrated that the opportunity to make the procurement response, as opposed to simple exposure to the procurement stimulus alone, was required. In Experiment 3, rats learned 2 distinct discriminated heterogeneous chains; extinction of 1 procurement response specifically weakened the consumption response that had been associated with it. The results suggest that learning to inhibit the procurement response may produce extinction of consumption responding through mediated extinction. The experiments suggest the importance of an associative analysis of instrumental behavior chains.

Learning to inhibit the response during instrumental (operant) extinction.

“…In our hands, the renewal effect in operant learning has never been that complete. In addition, recent experiments with the extinction of heterogeneous instrumental chains have revealed little evidence that the presence/absence of a second response manipulandum causes generalization decrement with a target response (Thrailkill & Bouton, 2015b, c). …”

Increasing the persistence of a heterogeneous behavior chain: Studies of extinction in a rat model of search behavior of working dogs

“…Therefore, partial reinforcement and noncontingent reinforcers could influence persistence of the responses in the chain. It is also likely, though not addressed here experimentally, that efforts to increase the persistence of one response will influence the persistence of the other behaviors in the chain because the behaviors become associated during training (Thrailkill & Bouton, 2015a, b). …”

“…We have recently proposed that heterogeneous behavior chains studied in the laboratory describe behaviors analogous to those involved in drug or junk-food procurement and consumption (Thrailkill & Bouton, 2015a, b). In that case, our goal was to reduce undesirable behaviors that take place in a chain.…”

“…We therefore investigated them here. Recent work by two of us has developed a procedure in which rats learn to make a discriminated heterogeneous behavior chain (Thrailkill & Bouton, 2015a, b). In the method, rats learn to make a search response (e.g., pulling a chain) in the presence of a search SD that leads to the presentation of a target SD that sets the occasion for a target response (e.g., pressing a lever) that is then reinforced with a food pellet.…”

Occasion setting, inhibition, and the contextual control of extinction in Pavlovian and instrumental (operant) learning

“…Group SR showed little evidence of responding, whereas groups S and Control showed robust and equivalent responding. Thus, nonreinforced presentations of the S without the opportunity to make the response did not weaken the response (see also Thrailkill & Bouton, 2015a, 2016). This result is not consistent with theories suggesting a role for Pavlovian motivational support of instrumental responding (e.g., two-process theory, e.g.…”