Extinction burst: an attentional assessment

Extinction is not just a passive decay of behavior but an active process of reorganization. This study explored this reorganization by examining the extinction burst and its connection to changes in attentional stimulus control in human participants. In Experiment 1 (N=64), participants responded on either a Fixed-Ratio 1 (FR1) or Fixed-Ratio 5 (FR5) schedule, followed by extinction. Both schedules triggered a significant extinction burst in the first seconds of extinction, with the burst being larger under FR5. In Experiment 2 (N=32), response rates and eye-tracking data (gaze fixation dispersion) were measured at the same time under FR1 and FR5 schedules. Results confirmed the extinction burst, which was again more pronounced in the FR5 group. Importantly, attentional reorganization followed a different time course from the motor response: fixation dispersion stayed steady during the baseline and the peak of the burst (E1) but increased significantly in the post-burst interval (E2) as responses began to decline. These findings indicate that extinction starts a hierarchical adaptive process: a low-cost 'exploitation' phase (the motor burst) followed by a broader 'exploration' phase (attentional dispersion), occurring only after the initial strategy fails.