Evaluating functions of praise for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

We assessed whether novel praise statements could be used to (a) maintain and increase responses with existing reinforcement histories and (b) teach a previously untaught response among children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder across two experiments. During response-stimulus pairing, two responses resulted in preferred edibles but only one also produced a praise statement. In the absence of edibles, the response continuing to produce praise tended to persist more. Next, reversing the praise contingency tended to increase the other response. However, in no case did contingent delivery of those same praise statements result in the acquisition of untaught responses. These findings suggest that conditioning praise statements could serve different functions (antecedent or consequence) depending on the reinforcement history for particular responses.

A retrospective analysis of the relation between resurgence and renewal of behavior targeted for reduction.

Functional communication training (FCT) is an evidence-based treatment for behavior targeted for reduction that often combines extinction for target responses and arranges functionally equivalent reinforcement for alternative behavior. Long-term effectiveness of FCT can become compromised when transitioning from clinic to nonclinic contexts or thinning reinforcement schedules for appropriate behavior. Such increases in targeted behavior have been conceptualized as renewal and resurgence, respectively. The relation between resurgence and renewal has yet to be reported. Therefore, the present report retrospectively analyzed the relation between renewal and resurgence in data collected when implementing FCT with children diagnosed with developmental disabilities. We found no relation when evaluating all 34 individuals assessed for resurgence and renewal or a subset of individuals exhibiting both resurgence and renewal. These findings suggest that one form of relapse may not be predictive of another form of relapse.

Effects of pay rate and instructions on attrition in crowdsourcing research.

Researchers in social sciences increasingly rely on crowdsourcing marketplaces such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Prolific to facilitate rapid, low-cost data collection from large samples. However, crowdsourcing suffers from high attrition, threatening the validity of crowdsourced studies. Separate studies have demonstrated that (1) higher pay rates and (2) additional instructions-i.e., informing participants about task requirements, asking for personal information, and describing the negative impact of attrition on research quality-can reduce attrition rates with MTurk participants. The present study extended research on these possible remedies for attrition to Prolific, another crowdsourcing marketplace with strict requirements for participant pay. We randomly assigned 225 participants to one of four groups. Across groups, we evaluated effects of pay rates commensurate with or double the US minimum wage, expanding the upper range of this independent variable; two groups also received additional instructions. Higher pay reduced attrition and correlated with more accurate performance on experimental tasks but we observed no effect of additional instructions. Overall, our findings suggest that effects of increased pay on attrition generalize to higher minimum pay rates and across crowdsourcing platforms. In contrast, effects of additional instructions might not generalize across task durations, task types, or crowdsourcing platforms.

Selective effects of conspecific movement on social preference in zebrafish (Danio rerio) using real-time 3D tracking and 3D animation.

Zebrafish show social behavior such as shoaling and schooling, which is a result of complex and interdependent interactions among conspecifics. Zebrafish social behavior is interdependent in the sense that one fish's behavior affects both conspecific behavior and, as a result, their own behavior. Previous research examined effects of the interdependent interactions on the preference for social stimulus but lacked clear evidence that specific conspecific movements were reinforcing. The present research examined whether dependency between individual experimental fish's motion and a social-stimulus fish's motions contributes to preference for the social stimulus. In Experiment 1, a 3D animated stimulus fish either chased individual experimental fish or was motionless, serving as dependent and independent motions, respectively. In Experiment 2, the stimulus fish either chased experimental fish, moved away, or moved independently of the experimental fish. In both experiments, experimental fish spent more time near the stimulus fish showing dependent and interactive movements, indicating preference for dependent motion over independent motion, and chasing over other motions. Implications of these results are discussed including a potential role of operant conditioning in the preference for social stimuli.

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.

A quantitative analysis of resurgence following downshifts in alternative-reinforcer magnitude.

Resurgence is the increase in a previously reinforced and then extinguished target response due to changes in reinforcement conditions for an alternative response, including reductions in the rate or magnitude of reinforcement for the alternative response. Research with nonhumans suggests that reductions in both alternative-reinforcer rate and magnitude produce resurgence, but the present study was the first to examine effects of downshifts in alternative-reinforcer magnitude on humans' resurgence. Moreover, it was the first to evaluate whether the quantitative framework, resurgence as choice in context (RaC2 ), could account for those effects. Consistent with predictions of RaC2 , resurgence of a target button press occurred with reductions in point gain for an alternative response, with greater reductions producing higher levels of resurgence. However, the model consistently underpredicted and then overpredicted resurgence during tests with low-magnitude reinforcement and extinction. Systematic deviations in model predictions of alternative responding were also evident and consistent with previous fits of RaC2 to nonhuman data. Overall, our findings suggest that RaC2 could be a useful quantitative theoretical framework for understanding processes contributing to resurgence in humans, but further theoretical development is needed to account for the apparent divergent effects of extinction versus downshifts in reinforcer magnitude.

A quantitative analysis of the effects of alternative reinforcement rate and magnitude on resurgence.

Resurgence occurs when a previously reinforced and then extinguished target response increases due to a worsening of reinforcement conditions for an alternative response. We conducted four crowdsourcing experiments to evaluate effects of alternative-reinforcer rate and magnitude on resurgence with humans. Contingent on an alternative response, we manipulated across groups either the rate of point delivery (Experiment 1) or number of points delivered per reinforcer (Experiments 2-3). Experiment 4 arranged combinations of high- or low-rate and high- or low-magnitude alternative reinforcement across four groups. When extinguishing alternative responding across experiments, we observed resurgence of target responding with relatively high rates of alternative reinforcement but differences in reinforcer magnitude did not influence resurgence. A quantitative model based on the concatenated matching law, Resurgence as Choice in Context (RaC2), provided a poor fit to the data, generally underpredicted target responding, and could not account for data from control groups experiencing extinction of target responding in the absence of alternative reinforcement. We then fit a modified version of RaC2 borrowing an assumption from theories of choice that suggest some proportion of reinforcers are misallocated between responses - this modified version of RaC2 provided a better account of these findings.

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.

Blackouts can serve as a contextual feature and enhance resurgence.

Resurgence occurs when a worsening of conditions for an alternative response (e.g., extinction) increases a previously reinforced and subsequently extinguished target response. In contrast, renewal is an increase in a response previously eliminated by extinction following a contextual change. Moreover, arranging contextual changes during resurgence tests has enhanced relapse compared with the absence of contextual changes. Several laboratory studies evaluating resurgence in humans have included interruptions of operant tasks by presenting instructions or "blackouts" immediately prior to phase changes in which reinforcement contingencies change. Such interruptions could enhance relapse during testing similarly to changes in contextual stimuli. We tested this possibility in the present study with human participants recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk by interrupting the task across groups with 1-s blackouts every 12 s, 60 s, between phases, or by arranging no blackouts in a control group. We found that blackouts prior to phase changes increased resurgence effects relative to no blackouts, suggesting that blackouts between phases are a type of contextual manipulation serving to increase the salience of contingency changes.

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.

Prevalence of relapse of automatically maintained behavior resulting from context changes.

Increases in behavior due to context changes are common and are known as instances of renewal. Clinically relevant examples from the literature highlighting renewal often include socially mediated problem behaviors. This report retrospectively analyzed data during context changes for individuals who engaged in problem behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement, to evaluate the prevalence of relapse. Problem behavior reemerged during changes both in the person implementing treatment (e.g., introducing a caregiver; 36%) and in the setting (e.g., introducing treatment in the home; 26%). Most prevalence studies report greatest relapse immediately following context changes but the highest level of relapse was observed after 5 sessions following person changes and no systematic pattern with setting changes. These patterns of relapse likely reflect differences in the function of settings and people relative to automatically reinforced behavior in the present study. Implications of relapse for treatments of problem behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement are discussed.

Extending a misallocation model to children's choice behavior.

Nonhuman animal models show that reinforcers control behavior through what they signal about the likelihood of future events, but such control is generally imperfect. Imperfect control by the relation between past and likely future events may result from imperfect detection of those events as they occur, which result in imperfect detection of the relation between events. Such an approach would suggest the involvement of more complex psychological processes like memory in simple operant learning. We extended a research paradigm previously examined with nonhuman animals to test the ability of a quantitative model that assumes imperfect control by the relation between events arises because of (a) occasional misallocation of reinforcers to the wrong response, causing imperfect control by the relation between events; and (b) a tendency to explore or exploit which is independent of the relation between events. Children played a game in which one of two different responses could produce a reinforcer. The likelihood of a reinforcer for the same response that produced the last one varied across three conditions (.1, .5, .9). As with nonhuman animal models, children's choices followed these probabilities closely but not perfectly, suggesting strong control by what one reinforcer signals about subsequent reinforcers. Choice was well described by the quantitative model. This same model also provides a good description of nonhuman animal-model data, suggesting fundamentally similar mechanisms of control across species. These findings suggest reinforcers control behavior to the extent the relation between reinforcers can be detected-that is, simple operant learning may be more complex than is typically assumed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

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.

Zebrafish choice behavior is sensitive to reinforcer rate, immediacy, and magnitude ratios.

Behavioral flexibility has, in part, been defined by choice behavior changing as a function of changes in reinforcer payoffs. We examined whether the generalized matching law quantitatively described changes in choice behavior in zebrafish when relative reinforcer rates, delays/immediacy, and magnitudes changed between two alternatives across conditions. Choice was sensitive to each of the three reinforcer properties. Sensitivity estimates to changes in relative reinforcer rates were greater when 2 variable-interval schedules were arranged independently between alternatives (Experiment 1a) than when a single schedule pseudorandomly arranged reinforcers between alternatives (Experiment 1b). Sensitivity estimates for changes in relative reinforcer immediacy (Experiment 2) and magnitude (Experiment 3) were similar but lower than estimates for reinforcer rates. These differences in sensitivity estimates are consistent with studies examining other species, suggesting flexibility in zebrafish choice behavior in the face of changes in payoff as described by the generalized matching law.

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.

Effects of punishing target response during extinction on resurgence and renewal in zebrafish (Danio rerio).

We examined the effects of the presence and absence of punishment on the resurgence and renewal of extinguished operant behavior with zebrafish. With resurgence, food deliveries reinforced target responding in Phase 1 was exposed to shock punishment plus extinction (PUN + EXT) versus extinction alone (EXT) while introducing alternative reinforcement in Phase 2. All contingencies were discontinued in Phase 3. With renewal, target reinforcement during Phase 1 occurred in Context A and then during Phase 2 was exposed to either PUN + EXT or EXT in Context B. All contingencies were discontinued in Context A during Phase 3. During Phase 2 for both resurgence and renewal, decreases in target responding were more rapid with PUN + EXT than EXT. During testing in Phase 3, resurgence was less following PUN + EXT than EXT. In contrast, renewal was greater following PUN + EXT than EXT but differences in response rates at the end of Phase 2 complicated the interpretation. We discuss these differences between resurgence and renewal as due to differences in learning about alternative reinforcement (resurgence) versus more general contextual changes (renewal).

Repeated resurgence with and without a context change.

Resurgence is the reoccurrence of a target response when reinforcement for a more recently reinforced alternative response is eliminated or reduced. The present study arranged two successive three-phase procedures to assess whether resurgence decreases with repeated assessments. Moreover, we arranged a contextual change from the first to second assessment for some groups. Phase 1 reinforced a target response on a touchscreen computer with typically developing adults as participants according to either variable-ratio or variable-interval schedules of reinforcement. Phase 2 extinguished target responding and reinforced alternative responding. Phase 3 tested for resurgence by extinguishing alternative responding. Resurgence reliably occurred in all tests and decreased from the first to second exposure to the procedures but there were no effects of context change. Therefore, repeated exposures to resurgence tests reduced those effects but contextual changes had no effect.

Adventitious reinforcement during long-duration DRO exposure.

Differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) is a procedure often used to decrease problem behavior, but the processes responsible for behavior reduction are not well understood. This study assessed whether adventitious reinforcement of other behavior contributes to DRO effectiveness when, relative to previous research, DRO exposure is prolonged. Two response options were presented on a computer and target responding was reinforced on a variable-ratio schedule. Response rates were then compared during DRO versus yoked variable-time or extinction probes. Across 2 experiments, DRO decreased target responding and increased other responding more than control conditions. However, increases in other responding did not usually maintain despite target responding remaining at low levels. DRO might adventitiously reinforce other responses transiently but the decreases in target behavior could not be entirely explained by adventitious reinforcement of the other response. Instead, reductions in target responding likely depend on the discriminability of the DRO contingency.

Assessing potential reinforcement-like effects of brief stimuli unrelated to food reinforcers.

It is widely assumed that reinforcers are biologically relevant stimuli, or stimuli that have been associated with biologically relevant stimuli. However, brief, arbitrary stimuli have also been reported to have reinforcement-like effects, despite being unrelated to biologically relevant stimuli like food. The present study explored the potential reinforcement-like effects of brief stimuli across 5 experiments. In Experiments 1 through 4, pigeon subjects responded for food reinforcement and brief stimulus presentations in a 2-component multiple schedule. Neither baseline response rates nor resistance to change during disruption tests were systematically greater in a component with versus without brief stimulus presentations. Increasing the rate and duration of brief stimulus presentations in Experiment 4 did not reveal reinforcement-like effects when compared directly with food. In Experiment 5, pigeons chose between independent terminal links in a concurrent-chains procedure. Across conditions, varying the location, duration, and rate of brief stimulus presentations in the terminal links had no systematic effects on preference. In contrast, varying rates of food reinforcers resulted in large and reliable shifts in preference. Therefore, the present study found no systematic evidence that brief stimuli unrelated to food reliably increase response rates, resistance to change, or preference. These data demonstrate the value of systematic replication, and a behavioral momentum approach to assessing potential reinforcement-like effects.

The role of adventitious reinforcement during differential reinforcement of other behavior: A systematic replication.

Differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) is commonly used to decrease problem behavior by presenting reinforcers contingent upon the absence of a target response. Although it is well demonstrated that DROs decrease response rates, the processes producing these decreases are not well understood. The present study systematically replicated previous research assessing whether adventitious reinforcement of alternative behavior contributes to the effectiveness of DRO. We presented university students with two options on a computer and reinforced target responding on a variable-ratio schedule. Next, we compared decreases in target-response rates and any increases in alternative responding during DRO schedules versus yoked variable-time schedules or extinction probes. DRO schedules resulted in the lowest target-response rate and highest alternative-response rate. These findings generally provide some support for the adventitious reinforcement of "other" behavior.