Training reinforcement rates, resistance to extinction, and the role of context in reinstatement

Behavior reduced as a consequence of extinction or intervention can relapse. According to behavioral momentum theory, the extent to which behavior persists and relapses once it has been eliminated depends on the relative training reinforcement rate among discriminative stimuli. In addition, studies of context renewal reveal that relapse depends on the similarity between the training stimulus context and the test stimulus context following disruption by extinction. In the present experiments with pigeons, we arranged different reinforcement rates in the presence of distinct discriminative stimuli across components of a multiple schedule. Following extinction, we attempted to reinstate responding in the presence of those target components with response-independent food presentations. Importantly, we arranged the reinstating food presentations either within the target components or in separate components, either paired with extinction (Experiment 1) or reinforcement (Experiment 2) during baseline. Reinstatement increased with greater training reinforcement rates when the reinstating food presentations were arranged in the target components and the separate components paired with reinforcement during training. Reinstatement was smaller and was not systematically related to training reinforcement rates in the target components when reinstating food presentation occurred in separate components paired with extinction. These findings suggest that relapse depends on the history of reinforcement associated with the discriminative stimuli in which the relapse-inducing event occurs.