Renewal of extinguished operant behavior following changes in social context

Renewal is the reoccurrence of previously extinguished behavior following a change in the context in which extinction was conducted. Despite an extensive body of research examining renewal, little is known about the role of social stimuli in renewal. The present experiments provided a novel examination of renewal of operant behavior by changing social stimuli across phases in an ABA renewal preparation. In both experiments, social stimuli were arranged by placing another rat in a second compartment of a divided operant chamber. In Experiment 1, the presence of another rat defined the extinction context, whereas an empty second compartment defined the baseline and testing contexts. We reversed these contextual manipulations in Experiment 2 such that the presence of another rat defined the baseline and testing contexts and the second compartment was empty during extinction. Renewal of lever pressing occurred when the other rat was removed from the chamber in Experiment 1 and when the other rat was returned to the chamber in Experiment 2. Thus, social stimuli may function as contextual stimuli, and changes in social contexts may produce renewal of previously extinguished behavior.