Peer-reviewed literature establishes that continuously reinforced behaviors extinguish more rapidly than those trained on a partial or intermittent schedule, a phenomenon known as the partial reinforcement extinction effect.
Three experiments explored how training reinforcement schedule and context influence the elimination and recovery of human operant behavior. In Experiment 1, participants learned a discriminated operant response in Context A before the response was eliminated with extinction in Context B. They then received a final test in each context. Groups were trained with a discriminative stimulus that predicted a reinforced response on either every trial (Continuous Reinforcement; CRF) or some of the trials (Partial Reinforcement; PRF). Extinction was slower following PRF training (a partial reinforcement extinction effect; PREE) and extinguished responding increased when tested in Context A (ABA renewal). Experiment 2 further confirmed the PREE was obtained equally whether extinction occurred in the training context (Context A) or a new context (Context B) which is consistent with trial-based accounts of the PREE. Experiment 3 used the same design as Experiment 1 to evaluate the influence of training reinforcement on response elimination with an omission contingency. Across the omission training phase in Context B, the decrease in responding occurred more slowly in the PRF-trained group in comparison to the CRF-trained group, perhaps the first demonstration of what might be termed a partial reinforcement omission effect. Again, ABA renewal was observed in Context A. Training reinforcement schedule therefore had a similar influence on response elimination with extinction and omission. Elimination and recovery of human instrumental behavior, with extinction or omission, are influenced by training reinforcement schedule and context.
INTERMITTENT (PARTIAL) REINFORCEMENT 31 Schedules of Reinforcement 32 The Partial Reinforcement Effect 37 4 BEHAVIOR … followed by reinforcement, even though it did \} nothing to produce the reinforcement: reinforcement was in … between an act and its reinforcement or non- reinforcement is a schedule-of-reinforcement. We have already
Pavlovian conditioning is sensitive to the temporal relationship between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (US). This has motivated models that describe learning as a process that continuously updates associative strength during the trial or specifically encodes the CS-US interval. These models predict that extinction of responding is also continuous, such that response loss is proportional to the cumulative duration of exposure to the CS without the US. We review evidence showing that this prediction is incorrect, and that extinction is trial-based rather than time-based. We also present two experiments that test the importance of trials versus time on the Partial Reinforcement Extinction Effect (PREE), in which responding extinguishes more slowly for a CS that was inconsistently reinforced with the US than for a consistently reinforced one. We show that increasing the number of extinction trials of the partially reinforced CS, relative to the consistently reinforced CS, overcomes the PREE. However, increasing the duration of extinction trials by the same amount does not overcome the PREE. We conclude that animals learn about the likelihood of the US per trial during conditioning, and learn trial-by-trial about the absence of the US during extinction. Moreover, what they learn about the likelihood of the US during conditioning affects how sensitive they are to the absence of the US during extinction.
Stimulus modality effects on transformations of conditioned enhancement and conditioned suppression in rats. Unconditioned and conditioned effects of house-light offset and acoustic white noise on barpressing behavior maintained by intermittent food reinforcement were tested in male hooded rats. Presentations of these stimuli prior to their acquiring signal value initially tended to depress and then to enhance barpressing rate, but generally the rate of the on-going barpressing was lower during the light offset then during noise presentations. Subsequently, one stimulus was used to signal continuous food reinforcement, evoking conditioned enhancement, and the other to signal inescapable footshock eliciting conditioned suppression of barpressing. The enhancement was acquired more rapidly than the suppression, independent of the stimulus modality used. The stimulus modality effect emerged when the continuous food reinforcement was withdrawn, since enhancement elicited by light offset extinguished more rapidly than elicited by noise.
next response is reinforced varies from reinforcement to reinforcement. On a VI-10 second … Is No More Reinforcement? 25 Spontaneous Recovery 26 Schedules of Reinforcement 27 Variable … Approximation 47 Continuous Reinforcement 48 Maintaining a Behavior 48 Partial Reinforcement 48 Extinction
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