Contingency discrimination training and resurgence: Effects of reduced extinction session durations

Resurgence is an increase in a suppressed target behavior following a worsening of conditions for a more recently reinforced alternative behavior. Prior research shows that exposure to equal-duration sessions of alternative reinforcement availability versus unavailability during treatment (i.e., contingency discrimination training; CDT) reduces resurgence. Clinically, minimizing exposure to extinction while maintaining the resurgence-mitigating effects of CDT would be desirable. This experiment examined the effects of reduced off-session durations by exposing groups of rats to different ratios of off:on session durations: All On (0 min: 30 min), CDT 1:1 (30 min: 30 min), CDT 1:2 (15 min: 30 min), CDT 1:6 (5 min: 30 min), and CDT escalate (i.e., [Esc] off-session duration increased across sessions). Resurgence decreased exponentially with "off" session duration, with CDT 1:2 reducing resurgence and both CDT 1:1 and CDT Esc eliminating resurgence while generating control of alternative behavior by the prevailing reinforcement contingencies, without increasing the total number of target responses during treatment. Resurgence as choice in context theory described the data well with the assumption that the effect of the signaling properties of the reinforcement contingencies themselves increases linearly with the off:on duration ratio, as is true with the S-/S+ ratio in other discriminations.