Carolyn M. Ritchey

• Auburn University

Resurgence is defined as an increase in a previously reinforced and reduced target response when conditions worsen for a more recently reinforced alternative response. The present experiment evaluated the effects of target‐ and alternative‐reinforcer rate on resurgence in humans. We arranged combinations of contingent high‐ and low‐rate target and...

Several studies have examined the prevalence of behavioral relapse among individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities following common treatment challenges (context changes, schedule thinning). Most applied studies compare behavior during the treatment challenges with the maximum level of behavior from five preceding treatment sessi...

Resurgence can be defined as increases in previously reinforced and subsequently extinguished target responding when conditions for an alternative response worsen. Worsening of alternative conditions, such as extinction, has been linked to relapse of clinically relevant behavior. Preclinical researchers have evaluated whether punishing target respo...

Functional communication training (FCT) is an evidence‐based treatment for behavior targeted for reduction that often combines extinction for target responses and arranges functionally equivalent reinforcement for alternative behavior. Long‐term effectiveness of FCT can become compromised when transitioning from clinic to nonclinic contexts or thin...

The relapse of challenging behavior poses a serious threat to the long-term effectiveness of behavioral interventions. Moreover, relapse can significantly impact an individual’s quality of life and ability to be a productive member of society. As a result, clinical relapse has inspired laboratory research that models, isolates, and investigates the...

Researchers in social sciences increasingly rely on crowdsourcing marketplaces such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Prolific to facilitate rapid, low-cost data collection from large samples. However, crowdsourcing suffers from high attrition, threatening the validity of crowdsourced studies. Separate studies have demonstrated that (1) higher...

Zebrafish show social behavior such as shoaling and schooling, which is a result of complex and interdependent interactions among conspecifics. Zebrafish social behavior is interdependent in the sense that one fish’s behavior affects both conspecific behavior and, as a result, their own behavior. Previous research examined effects of the interdepen...

Unlabelled: Resurgence is the return of a previously reinforced response as conditions worsen for an alternative response, such as the introduction of extinction, reductions in reinforcement, or punishment. As a procedure, resurgence has been used to model behavioral treatments and understand behavioral processes contributing both to relapse of pr...

Resurgence and renewal are relapse phenomena in which behavior undergoing extinction returns as a result of worsening of reinforcement conditions or changes in environmental context, respectively. The present experiments examined laboratory models of resurgence and renewal in isolation and in combination to assess the potential influences of these...

Serial reversal-learning procedures are simple preparations that allow for a better understanding of how animals learn about environmental changes, including flexibly shifting responding to adapt to changing reinforcement contingencies. The present study examined serial reversal learning with humans by arranging both midsession and variable conting...

Resurgence occurs when a worsening of conditions for an alternative response (e.g., extinction) increases a previously reinforced and subsequently extinguished target response. In contrast, renewal is an increase in a response previously eliminated by extinction following a contextual change. Moreover, arranging contextual changes during resurgence...

Laboratory models of relapse provide methods for evaluating challenges to behavioral treatments with differential reinforcement of an alternative response (DRA). Resurgence occurs with the worsening of conditions of reinforcement for appropriate behavior and renewal occurs when transitioning out of a treatment context. Across five experiments, part...

Increases in behavior due to context changes are common and are known as instances of renewal. Clinically relevant examples from the literature highlighting renewal often include socially mediated problem behaviors. This report retrospectively analyzed data during context changes for individuals who engaged in problem behavior maintained by automat...

Resurgence occurs when a previously reinforced and then extinguished target response increases due to reducing/eliminating an alternative source of reinforcement or punishing an alternative response. We evaluated whether duration of reinforcement history for a target response (1) affects the degree to which resurgence is observed in humans and (2)...

Behavioral flexibility has, in part, been defined by choice behavior changing as a function of changes in reinforcer payoffs. We examined whether the generalized matching law quantitatively described changes in choice behavior in zebrafish when relative reinforcer rates, delays/immediacy, and magnitudes changed between two alternatives across condi...

This is the draft of an article submitted for publication of a tutorial with a demonstration experiment to study operant behavior with crowdsourcing. We describe in detail the procedures used in our research on extinction and relapse of operant behavior recruiting participants through Amazon Mechanical Turk (Ritchey et al., 2021, Learning & Motivat...

A previously reinforced and then extinguished response can recur following a change in the environmental context despite extinction remaining in effect, often referred to as renewal. Using zebrafish, the present study examined how adding a punishment contingency to the training context affected the level of renewal. In Context A, responding was rei...

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing marketplace providing researchers with the opportunity to collect behavioral data from remote participants at a low cost. Recent research demonstrated reliable extinction effects, as well as renewal and resurgence of button pressing with MTurk participants. To further examine the generality of these...

Resurgence is the reoccurrence of a target response when reinforcement for a more recently reinforced alternative response is eliminated or reduced. The present study arranged two successive three-phase procedures to assess whether resurgence decreases with repeated assessments. Moreover, we arranged a contextual change from the first to second ass...