The control response in assessing resurgence: Useful or compromised tool?

A Comprehensive Systematic Review of Procedures and Analyses Used in Basic and Preclinical Studies of Resurgence, 1970-2020

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.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40614-022-00361-y.

Assessing human performance during contingency changes and extinction tests in reversal-learning tasks

Serial reversal-learning procedures are simple preparations that allow for a better understanding of how animals learn about environmental changes, including flexibly shifting responding to adapt to changing reinforcement contingencies. The present study examined serial reversal learning with humans by arranging both midsession and variable contingency reversals across two experiments. We also examined the effects of extinction by adding nonreinforced trials at the end of later sessions and provided the first evaluation of effects of win-stay/lose-shift versus counting strategies on accuracy and response latency of humans' reversal-learning performance. In each experiment, responding tracked contingency reversals, primarily with participants using either win-stay/lose-shift or counting strategies. Introducing variable reversal points in the second experiment resulted in near-exclusive win-stay/lose-shift responding among participants and eliminated counting of trials. Each experiment also revealed an immediate shift from S2 to S1 after experiencing extinction during the initial test trial, indicating resurgence of the initial response through a win-stay/lose-shift response pattern. Therefore, the present study replicates and extends prior findings of a win-stay/lose shift response pattern in situations of greater uncertainty. These findings suggest that differences in environmental certainty induce qualitatively different decision-making strategies.

Evaluating effects of context changes on resurgence in humans

Laboratory models of relapse provide methods for evaluating challenges to behavioral treatments with differential reinforcement of an alternative response (DRA). Resurgence occurs with the worsening of conditions of reinforcement for appropriate behavior and renewal occurs when transitioning out of a treatment context. Across five experiments, participants recruited via online crowdsourcing pressed onscreen buttons to earn points exchangeable for money and contexts sometimes changed through changes in the background image. Returning to the training context (ABA, Experiment 1) and transitioning to a novel context (ABC, Experiment 2) produced greater resurgence when removing alternative reinforcement in comparison with remaining in the treatment context (ABB). In contrast, we observed little difference in resurgence among AAA, ABB, and AAC context manipulations (Experiment 3) and ABA, ABC, and AAC context manipulations (Experiment 4). In Experiment 5, we evaluated relative contributions of the presence versus absence of context changes (ABA vs. ABB) in combination with or without the removal of alternative reinforcement. Both changing context and removing alternative reinforcement increased responding in isolation and the combination produced greater-than-additive effects. Overall, the present findings demonstrate a consistent effect of removing alternative reinforcement on relapse that, under certain conditions, can be enhanced by context change.

Examining effects of training duration on humans' resurgence and variability using a novel touchscreen procedure

Resurgence occurs when a previously reinforced and then extinguished target response increases due to reducing/eliminating an alternative source of reinforcement or punishing an alternative response. We evaluated whether duration of reinforcement history for a target response (1) affects the degree to which resurgence is observed in humans and (2) produces different gradients of response generalization around target responding during extinction testing. We arranged a novel touchscreen interface in which university students could swipe a 3D soccer ball to spin any direction. In Phase 1, the first direction swiped became the target and produced points exchangeable for money for 3 or 1 min across 2 groups. The first swipe was recorded but had no programmed consequence in a third group. In Phase 2, swipes 180-degrees from the target resulted in points for 3 min in all groups. Point deliveries ceased for 2 min to test for resurgence in Phase 3. Target responses resurged during testing to a relatively greater extent with longer Phase-1 training but gradients of response generalization did not differ among groups. These findings extend prior research on the role of training duration on resurgence. We discuss methodological and conceptual issues surrounding the assessment of response generalization in resurgence.

Evaluating Extinction, Renewal, and Resurgence of Operant Behavior in Humans with Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing marketplace providing researchers with the opportunity to collect behavioral data from remote participants at a low cost. Recent research demonstrated reliable extinction effects, as well as renewal and resurgence of button pressing with MTurk participants. To further examine the generality of these findings, we replicated and extended these methods across six experiments arranging reinforcement and extinction of a target button press. In contrast to previous findings, we did not observe as reliable of decreases in button pressing during extinction (1) after training with VR or VI schedules of reinforcement, (2) in the presence or absence of context changes, or (3) with an added response cost for button pressing. However, we found that that a 1-point response cost for all button presses facilitated extinction to a greater extent than the absence of response cost. Nevertheless, we observed ABA renewal of button pressing when changing background contexts across phases and resurgence when extinguishing presses on an alternative button. Our findings suggest that MTurk could be a viable platform from which to ask and address questions about extinction and relapse processes, but further procedural refinements will be necessary to improve the replicability of control by experimental contingencies.

Resurgence without overall worsening of alternative reinforcement

Three experiments were conducted with pigeons to assess discriminated periods of nonreinforcement as precipitators of resurgence. Each experiment occurred in three phases. In the Training phase, key-pecking was reinforced according to variable-interval schedules that alternated between two response keys (Experiment 1) or were concurrently available on two response keys (Experiments 2a & 2b). In the Alternative-Reinforcement phase, responding to one key was extinguished, while that to the other was reinforced according to tandem schedules. These then were replaced by chained schedules with the same programmed reinforcement rate in the Resurgence-Test phase. Resurgence occurred both when the signaled period of nonreinforcement was a darkened keylight in the terminal link of the chain schedule (Experiment 1) and a darkened keylight (Experiment 2a) or keylight color change (Experiment 2b) in the initial link of the chain schedule. Thus, signaled periods of extinction, without accompanying reductions in reinforcement rate, precipitated resurgence, suggesting that resurgence is not the result of worsening of overall reinforcement conditions, but also occurs when local conditions of reinforcement are worsened.

Effects of response cost magnitude on resurgence of human operant behavior

Extensive research has been dedicated to the study of resurgence following extinction and differential reinforcement of alternative behavior. Less is known about the effects of punishment on resurgence. This study extended previous research by examining whether the magnitude of response cost punishment affects resurgence of human operant behavior. College students engaged in a computer task using the three-phase resurgence procedure where points were used to reinforce target (Phase 1) or alternative (Phase 2) behavior. Across three groups, Phase 2 contingencies for the target response were manipulated. In one group, only extinction was implemented. In the other two groups, response cost was also implemented. Response cost was equal to or double the number of points that could be gained for alternative responding. Resurgence was similar in Phase 3 across the three groups, demonstrating that neither the addition nor the magnitude of punishment differentially affected response recovery under these conditions. Future research should examine other parameters of punishment (e.g., delay, schedule) and how these variables interact with different parameters of alternative reinforcement to increase our understanding of the conditions under which resurgence may be exacerbated or minimized.

Preliminary Evaluations of Habituation of Operant Responding for Sensory Stimuli in Humans

Research suggests that repetitive reinforcers wane in their ability to maintain operant behavior in a manner consistent with habituation. Weaker reinforcers, including sensory stimuli common in human work, may be most impacted by repetition. The present research examined within-session operant responding patterns for visual stimuli in humans from two experiments assessing multiple characteristics of habituation. In Experiment 1, declines in reinforced responding were assessed and stimulus specificity was evaluated to test habituation's contribution to these declines. Seventy-three participants completed two visits, both including a reinforcement paradigm using pictures. With repetition, operant responding declined. The stimulus specificity manipulation did not enhance responding, suggesting that habituation did not contribute to response declines. Several methodological concerns may have contributed to the absence of a stimulus specificity effect. Experiment 2 assessed a separate habituation characteristic, rate of stimulation, to address these methodological concerns and further evaluate habituation. Twenty-eight participants completed the reinforcement paradigm over three visits. Decline in responding was partially supported, but the rate of stimulation did not alter declines. In sum, habituation's contribution to within-session declines for sensory reinforcers was not evident in either experiment. These results suggest that assessment of habituation of sensory reinforcers in humans may require parametric evaluation.