Resurgence of instrumental behavior after an abstinence contingency

Abstract

In resurgence, an extinguished instrumental behavior (R1) recovers when a behavior that replaced it (R2) is also extinguished. The phenomenon may be relevant to understanding relapse that can occur after the termination of “contingency management” treatments, in which unwanted behavior (e.g., substance abuse) is reduced by reinforcing alternative behavior. When reinforcement is discontinued, the unwanted behavior might resurge. However, unlike most resurgence experiments, contingency management treatments also introduce a negative contingency in which reinforcers are not delivered unless the client has abstained from the unwanted behavior. Two experiments with rats therefore examined the effects of adding a negative “abstinence” contingency to the resurgence design. During response elimination, R2 was not reinforced unless R1 had not been emitted for a minimum period of time (45, 90, or 135 s). In both experiments, adding such a contingency to simple R1 extinction reduced, but did not eliminate, resurgence. Experiment 2 found the same effect in a yoked group that could earn reinforcers for R2 at the same points in time, but without the requirement to abstain from R1. Thus, the negative contingency per se did not contribute. Results suggest that the contingency reduced resurgence by making reinforcers more difficult to earn and more widely spaced in time. This could have allowed the animal to learn that R1 was extinguished in the “context” of infrequent reinforcement—a context more like that of resurgence testing. The results are thus consistent with a contextual (renewal) account of resurgence. The method might provide a better model of relapse after termination of a contingency management treatment.

Discriminative properties of the reinforcer can be used to attenuate the renewal of extinguished operant behavior

“…In concordance with results found on changing both the physical context and temporal context (Rosas & Bouton, 1997, 1998), this pattern of results suggests that the reinforcer context and the physical context have separate but additive effects. The results replicate the findings of Experiment 1 and extend the notion of the hypothesized “reinforcer context” (see Bouton et al, 1993; Bouton & Schepers, 2014). The results are also consistent with the finding in pigeons that the combination of a context change (created by changing key light color) and the discontinuation of Phase-2 reinforcers causes more resurgence in the resurgence paradigm than reinforcer discontinuation alone (Kincaid, Lattal, & Spence, 2015).…”

“…According to the context hypothesis, resurgence occurs when reinforcement is removed because animals have learned to inhibit their responding in the context of alternative reinforcement (e.g., Bouton & Schepers, 2014; Schepers & Bouton, 2015; Winterbauer & Bouton, 2010). Thus, removing reinforcers changes the context sufficiently to produce a relapse similar to ABC renewal (e.g.…”

“…If resurgence occurs due to a lack of generalization between the context with reinforcers and the testing context without, then encouraging generalization between these two phases should theoretically decrease resurgence. Consistent with this idea, it has been shown across a wide array of experimental procedures that leaner schedules of R2 reinforcement (that should encourage greater generalization to the testing phase, where no reinforcers are delivered) do attenuate (and sometimes abolish) the resurgence effect (Bouton & Schepers, 2014; Bouton & Trask, 2015; Leitenberg et al, 1975; Schepers & Bouton, 2015; Sweeney & Shahan, 2013; Winterbauer & Bouton, 2012). …”

Role of the discriminative properties of the reinforcer in resurgence

“…This is because the animal theoretically learns to inhibit R1 when there are few reinforcers in the background, conditions more like the extinction conditions that prevail during the resurgence test. The perspective is also consistent with the finding that reverse and forward thinning procedures both reduce resurgence (Bouton & Schepers, 2014; Schepers & Bouton, 2015), with forward thinning arguably being the more effective in reducing it (Schepers & Bouton, 2015). (Forward thinning may be more effective than reverse thinning because there is less abrupt of a change of context as the animal enters the test phase.)…”

“…Resurgence (defined as an increase in responding from Phase 2 to testing) is also reduced by using schedules that are “thinned” from high rates to low rates across Phase 2 (Schepers & Bouton, 2015; Winterbauer & Bouton, 2012), although thinning itself can produce an increase in R1 responding (termed “early resurgence” by Winterbauer & Bouton, 2012). However, a reverse thinning procedure in which reinforcement rates start the phase at a lean rate and then increase during training also weakens resurgence (Bouton & Schepers 2014; Schepers & Bouton, 2015). Thus, contrary to the model, differences in resurgence have been demonstrated in experimental and control groups that receive the same rates of reinforcement for R2 in the final response elimination session.…”