Timothy Shahan

• Ph.D.
• Professor at Utah State University

The idea that stimuli might function as conditioned reinforcers because of the information they convey about primary reinforcers has a long history in the study of learning. However, formal application of information theory to conditioned reinforcement has been largely abandoned in modern theorizing because of its failures with respect to observing...

Behavior analysis has often simultaneously depended upon and denied an implicit, hypothetical process of reinforcement as response strengthening. I discuss what I see as problematic about the use of such an implicit, possibly inaccurate, and likely unfalsifiable theory and describe issues to consider with respect to an alternative view without resp...

A preliminary theory of a temporary increase in the rate of an operant response with the transition to extinction (i.e., the extinction burst) is proposed. The theory assumes reinforcers are events permitting access to some valuable activity, and that such activity can compete for allocation with the target response under some conditions (e.g., ver...

Reinforcement learning inspires much theorizing in neuroscience, cognitive science, machine learning, and AI. A central question concerns the conditions that produce the perception of a contingency between an action and reinforcement—the assignment-of-credit problem. Contemporary models of associative and reinforcement learning do not leverage the...

Resurgence as Choice (RaC) is a quantitative theory suggesting that an increase in an extinguished target behavior with subsequent extinction of an alternative behavior (i.e., resurgence) is governed by the same processes as choice more generally. We present data from an experiment with rats examining a range of treatment durations with alternative...

This experiment examined the effects of alcohol concentration on response rate, persistence, and preference for alcohol. Rats responded for alcohol in a multiple schedule that delivered a 15% solution of alcohol in one component and a 5% solution of alcohol in the other component. Persistence of alcohol seeking was evaluated in extinction, and pref...

The extinction burst is an increase in an operant behavior early in the transition to extinction. A matching‐law‐based quantitative theory suggests that it results from the elimination of competition from reinforcement‐related behavior that accompanies the transition to extinction. This experiment examined the effects of reinforcement magnitude on...

The effects of punishment rate on response allocation were investigated using a choice procedure where relative reinforcement rates changed rapidly within session. Predictions from a modified version of the direct-suppression model were tested in two separate experiments. In both experiments, sessions were composed of seven unsignaled components, e...

Basic and retrospective translational research has shown that the magnitude of resurgence is determined by the size of the decrease in alternative reinforcement, with larger decreases producing more resurgence. However, this finding has not been evaluated prospectively with a clinical population. In Experiment 1, five participants experienced a fix...

Optimal foraging theory suggests that animals make decisions which maximize their food intake per unit time when foraging, but the mechanisms animals use to track the value of behavioral alternatives and choose between them remain unclear. Several models for how animals integrate past experience have been suggested. However, these models make diffe...

Resurgence is a temporary increase in a previously suppressed target behavior following a worsening in reinforcement conditions. Previous studies have examined how higher rates or magnitudes of alternative reinforcement affect suppression of the target behavior and subsequent resurgence. However, there has been no investigation of the effects of hi...

Rationale: Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) often experience abnormalities in behavioral adaptation following environmental changes (i.e., cognitive flexibility) and tend to undervalue positive outcomes but overvalue negative outcomes. The probabilistic reversal learning task (PRL) is used to study these deficits across species and to...

Resurgence of previously reinforced behavior represents a challenge to otherwise successful interventions based on differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA). Expanded-operant treatments seek to increase the number of functional alternative behaviors through DRA, thereby potentially mitigating resurgence. However, the few studies that...

Estes (1944) reported that adding electric shock punishment to extinction hastened response suppression but that responding increased when shock was removed. This result contributed to a view that reinforcement and punishment are asymmetrical processes because punishment has only indirect and temporary suppressive effects. Azrin and Holz (1966) sug...

Translation of promising procedures for mitigating treatment relapse has received considerable attention recently from researchers across the basic—applied continuum. One procedure that has demonstrated mixed support involves increasing the duration of treatment as a strategy for blunting resurgence. In a recent translational study, Greer et al. (2...

Discontinuation of the contingency between a response and its reinforcer sometimes produces a temporary increase in the response before its rate decreases, a phenomenon called the extinction burst. Prior clinical and basic studies on the prevalence of the extinction burst provide highly disparate estimates. Existing theories on the extinction burst...

The effects of delivering nondrug alternative reinforcement on resistance to extinction and reinstatement of rats' ethanol‐maintained lever pressing were evaluated in two experiments. In both, rats self‐administered ethanol by lever pressing in a two‐component multiple schedule during baseline. In the Rich component, alternative food reinforcement...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s40614-022-00340-3.].

The present experiment investigated the effects of 1) repeated exposures to escalating punishment intensities and 2) repeated exposure to punishment after periods of vacation on response alloca- tion between punished and unpunished responding in three groups of rats. The first group (intensity + vacation) experienced repeated exposures to escalatin...

Resurgence refers to an increase of a previously reinforced target behavior following the worsening of conditions for a more recently reinforced alternative behavior. There is evidence to suggest that alternative reinforcers of greater magnitude are more effective at reducing target responding but may also result in more resurgence when removed. Si...

Despite widespread belief in the extinction burst as a common occurrence, relatively little empirical work has focused directly on the phenomenon. In order to provide additional data on the topic, we report reanalyses of published extinction-control groups from our laboratory following training with a variety of schedules and reinforcers. In additi...

To better approximate the human condition, animal models of relapse to drug and alcohol seeking have increasingly employed negative consequences to generate abstinence. Here we report the first demonstration of relapse to punishment-suppressed alcohol seeking induced by loss of non-drug reward (i.e., resurgence). We also report the first examinatio...

The behavioral processes determining the magnitude of the resurgence of destructive behavior during reinforcement schedule thinning have yet to be described, despite an uptick in prevalence research on the topic. As predicted by Resurgence as Choice theory, recent animal research has found that resurgence increases with the magnitude of a downshift...

The present study investigated the effects of escalating punishment intensity and repeated exposure to punishment on choice between punished and unpunished responses in five Long Evans rats. Equal reinforcement rates were programmed for both punished and unpunished responses on a concurrent schedule during both baseline and punishment phases. Durin...

To better approximate the human condition, animal models of relapse to drug and alcohol seeking have increasingly employed negative consequences to generate abstinence. Here we report the first demonstration of relapse to punishment-suppressed alcohol seeking induced by loss of non-drug reward (i.e., resurgence). We also report the first examinatio...

Clinicians frequently prescribe functional communication training (FCT) as a treatment for severe destructive behavior. Recent research has shown that FCT treatments are susceptible to treatment relapse in the form of the resurgence of destructive behavior when individuals contact periods in which reinforcers are unavailable. Results of preliminary...

Resurgence is an increase in a previously reinforced behavior following a worsening of conditions for a more recently reinforced behavior. Discrimination training is incorporated into treatment for problem behavior to prevent treatment adherence failures that may result in resurgence. There is evidence that resurgence may be reduced when a stimulus...

Resurgence of a previously suppressed target behavior is common when reinforcement for a more recently reinforced alternative behavior is thinned. To better characterize such resurgence, these experiments examined repeated within-session alternative reinforcement thinning using a progressive-interval (PI) schedule with rats. In Experiment 1, a tran...

In his book Coercion and Its Fallout Murray Sidman argued against the use of punishment based on concerns about its shortcomings and side effects. Among his concerns were the temporary nature of response suppression produced by punishment, the dangers of conditioned punishment, increases in escape and avoidance responses, punishment‐induced aggress...

Resurgence refers to an increase in a previously suppressed target behavior with a relative worsening of conditions for a more recently reinforced alternative behavior. This experiment examined the relation between resurgence and the magnitude of a reduction in the rate of reinforcement for the alternative behavior. Groups of both male and female r...

A variety of animals sometimes engage in a form of maladaptive decision-making characterized by repeatedly choosing an option providing food-predictive stimuli even though they earn less food for doing so. The temporal information-theoretic model suggests that such suboptimal choice depends on competition between the bits of temporal information co...

The present experiments assessed whether resistance to extinction of pigeons' key pecking decreased across repeated extinction tests. An additional impetus for this research was to determine how the quantitative framework provided by behavioral momentum theory might be used to describe any such changes across tests. Pigeons pecked keys in two‐compo...

Contingency is a critical concept for theories of associative learning and the assignment of credit problem in reinforcement learning. Measuring and manipulating it has, however, been problematic. The information-theoretic definition of contingency-normalized mutual information-makes it a readily computed property of the relation between reinforcin...

Alternative reinforcement-based treatments are among the most effective for reducing substance abuse. However, relapse often occurs when alternative reinforcement ends. Relapse following the loss of alternative reinforcement is called resurgence. An animal model has been used to study basic factors that may ultimately reduce resurgence but uses dru...

Contingency is a critical concept for theories of associative learning and the assignment of credit problem in reinforcement learning. Measuring and manipulating it has, however, been problematic. The information-theoretic definition of contingency—normalized mutual information—makes it a readily computed property of the relation between reinforcin...

Numerous examples in the decision-making literature demonstrate that animals sometimes make choices that are not in their long-term best interest. One particular example finds pigeons preferring a low-probability alternative in lieu of a high-probability alternative, referred to as suboptimal choice. Although there is ample evidence that pigeons en...

Resurgence is an increase in a previously suppressed behavior resulting from a worsening in reinforcement conditions for current behavior. Resurgence is often observed following successful treatment of problem behavior with differential reinforcement when reinforcement for an alternative behavior is subsequently omitted or reduced. The efficacy of...

Differential-reinforcement-based treatments involving extinction of target problem behavior and reinforcement of an alternative behavior are highly effective. However, extinction of problem behavior is sometimes difficult or contraindicated in clinical settings. In such cases, punishment instead of extinction may be used in combination with alterna...

This code can be used to create multiple-group simulations of the Resurgence as Choice model (RaC; Shahan & Craig, 2017) in R.

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 soc...

Resurgence is often defined as the recurrence of an extinguished behavior when a more recently reinforced alternative behavior is also extinguished. Resurgence has also been observed when the alternative behavior is devalued by other means (e.g., reinforcement rate or magnitude reductions). The present study investigated whether punishment of an al...

Resistance to extinction in a target multiple-schedule component varies inversely with the rate of reinforcement arranged in an alternative component during baseline. The present experiment asked whether changing the reinforcer rate in an alternative component would impact extinction of target component responding if those changes occurred in an of...

Suboptimal choice refers to preference for an alternative offering a low probability of food (suboptimal alternative) over an alternative offering a higher probability of food (optimal alternative). Numerous studies have found that stimuli signaling probabilistic food play a critical role in the development and maintenance of suboptimal choice. How...

Provision of alternative non-drug reinforcement is among the most effective methods for treating substance use disorders. However, when alternative reinforcers become unavailable during treatment interruptions or upon cessation of treatment, relapse often occurs. Relapse following the loss of alternative reinforcement is known as resurgence. One fa...

Resurgence refers to the recurrence of an extinguished target behavior following subsequent suspension of alternative reinforcement. Delivery of reinforcers during extinction of alternative behavior has been shown to mitigate resurgence. The present experiment aimed to determine whether delivering stimuli associated with reinforcers during resurgen...

This PDF presents a method for simulating resurgence data using Shahan and Craig's (2017) Resurgence as Choice Model using R. The code is annotated so that it is accessible to those without much experience using R software. Executable code may be accessed in the .Rmd file that accompanies the PDF.

This RMarkdown file presents an executable method for simulating resurgence data using Shahan and Craig's (2017) Resurgence as Choice Model using R. The code is annotated so that it is accessible to those without much experience using R software. The PDF that accompanies this file is meant to serve as a user's manual for the program. The code cont...

We review quantitative accounts of behavioral momentum theory (BMT), its application to clinical treatment, and its extension to post-intervention relapse of target behavior. We suggest that its extension can account for relapse using reinstatement and renewal models, but that its application to resurgence is flawed both conceptually and in its fai...

Resurgence is defined as an increase in the frequency of a previously reinforced target response when an alternative source of reinforcement is suspended. Despite an extensive body of research examining factors that affect resurgence, the effects of alternative-reinforcer magnitude have not been examined. Thus, the present experiments aimed to fill...

In a frequently used suboptimal-choice procedure pigeons choose between an alternative that delivers three food pellets with p = 1.0 and an alternative that delivers ten pellets with p = 0.2. Because pigeons reliably choose the probabilistic (suboptimal) alternative, the procedure has been proposed as a nonhuman analog of human gambling. The presen...

Despite the success of exposure-based psychotherapies in anxiety treatment, relapse remains problematic. Resurgence, the return of previously eliminated behavior following the elimination of an alternative source of reinforcement, is a promising model of operant relapse. Nonhuman resurgence research has shown that higher rates of alternative reinfo...

Delivery of alternative reinforcers in the presence of stimuli previously associated with reinforcement for target behavior increases the susceptibility of target behavior to relapse. To explore contingencies that might mitigate this counter‐therapeutic effect, we trained pigeons on a procedure that entailed extinction of previously reinforced targ...

Three experiments explored the impact of different reinforcer rates for alternative behavior (DRA) on the suppression and post-DRA relapse of target behavior, and the persistence of alternative behavior. All experiments arranged baseline, intervention with extinction of target behavior concurrently with DRA, and post-treatment tests of resurgence o...

The behavioral-momentum model of resurgence predicts reinforcer rates within a resurgence preparation should have three effects on target behavior. First, higher reinforcer rates in baseline (Phase 1) produce more persistent target behavior during extinction plus alternative reinforcement. Second, higher rate alternative reinforcement during Phase...

The ability of organisms to detect reinforcer-rate changes in choice preparations is positively related to two factors: the magnitude of the change in rate and the frequency with which rates change. Gallistel (2012) suggested similar rate-detection processes are responsible for decreases in responding during operant extinction. Although effects of...

Resurgence following removal of alternative reinforcement has been studied in non-human animals, children with developmental disabilities, and typically functioning adults. Adult human laboratory studies have included responses without a controlled history of reinforcement, included only two response options, or involved extensive training. Arbitra...

Prior human research indicates robust, positive relations between impulsive choice (i.e., preference for smaller, immediate over larger, delayed rewards) and alcohol use disorders. However, varied findings in the nonhuman literature reveal a relatively ambiguous relation between impulsive choice and alcohol consumption in rodents. In addition, few...

Behavioral momentum theory suggests that the relation between a discriminative-stimulus situation and reinforcers obtained in that context (i.e., the Pavlovian stimulus-reinforcer relation) governs persistence of operant behavior. Within the theory, a mass-like aspect of behavior has been shown to be a power function of predisruption reinforcement...

Although the environmental determinants of context-specific behavioral persistence have been extensively studied within behavioral momentum theory, little is known about the neurobiological determinants. The present experiment assessed the impact of indirect dopamine agonism with D-amphetamine or dopamine D1 receptor antagonism with SCH23390 on con...

Problem behavior often has sensory consequences that cannot be separated from the target response, even if external, social reinforcers are removed during treatment. Because sensory reinforcers that accompany socially mediated problem behavior may contribute to persistence and relapse, research must develop analog sensory reinforcers that can be ex...

Resurgence refers to the reappearance of an extinguished operant behavior when reinforcement for an alternative behavior is also subsequently discontinued. Resurgence has been noted as a source of relapse to problem behavior following interventions involving alternative reinforcement, and has also been recently used as an animal model of relapse to...

Stimuli associated with primary reinforcement for instrumental behavior are widely believed to acquire the capacity to function as conditioned reinforcers via Pavlovian conditioning. Some Pavlovian conditioning studies suggest that animals learn the important temporal relations between stimuli and integrate such temporal information over separate e...

In the resurgence preparation, extinguished alcohol-maintained responding increases when food reinforcement introduced into the same context during extinction is also subsequently removed. However, drug and nondrug reinforcers may often be obtained in separate specific contexts. Accordingly, we aimed to determine whether extinguished behavior previ...

Resurgence is an increase in a previously extinguished operant response that occurs if an alternative reinforcement introduced during extinction is removed. Shahan and Sweeney (2011) developed a quantitative model of resurgence based on behavioral momentum theory that captures existing data well and predicts that resurgence should decrease as time...

A common treatment for operant problem behavior is alternative reinforcement. When alternative reinforcement is removed or reduced, however, resurgence of the target behavior can occur. Shahan and Sweeney (2011) developed a quantitative model of resurgence based on behavioral momentum theory that suggests higher rates of alternative reinforcement r...

Behavioral momentum theory asserts that preference and relative resistance to disruption depend on reinforcement rates and provide converging expressions of the conditioned value of discriminative stimuli. However, preference and resistance to disruption diverge when assessing preference during brief extinction probes. We expanded upon this opposin...

Naturally occurring impulsive choice has been found to positively predict alcohol consumption in rats. However, the extent to which experimental manipulation of impulsive choice may modify alcohol consumption remains unclear. In the present study, we sought to: (a) train low levels of impulsive choice in rats using early, prolonged exposure to rewa...

Four experiments examined relapse of extinguished observing behavior of pigeons using a two-component multiple schedule of observing-response procedures. In both components, unsignaled periods of variable-interval (VI) food reinforcement alternated with extinction and observing responses produced stimuli associated with the availability of the VI s...

An extensive body of research using concurrent-chains schedules of reinforcement has shown that choice for one of two differentially valued food-associated stimuli is dependent upon the overall temporal context in which those stimuli are embedded. The present experiments examined whether the concurrent chains procedure was useful for the study of b...

The effects of reinforcement on delayed matching to sample (DMTS) have been studied in two within-subjects procedures. In one, reinforcer magnitudes or probabilities vary from trial to trial and are signaled within trials (designated signaled DMTS trials). In the other, reinforcer probabilities are consistent for a series of trials produced by resp...

Behavioral momentum theory provides a quantitative account of how reinforcers experienced within a discriminative stimulus context govern the persistence of behavior that occurs in that context. The theory suggests that all reinforcers obtained in the presence of a discriminative stimulus increase resistance to change, regardless of whether those r...

Behavioral momentum theory provides a framework for understanding how conditions of reinforcement influence instrumental response strength under conditions of disruption (i.e., resistance to change). The present experiment examined resistance to change of divided-attention performance when different overall probabilities of reinforcement were arran...

According to behavioral momentum theory, preference and relative resistance to change in concurrent-chains schedules are correlated and reflect the relative conditioned value of discriminative stimuli. In the present study, we explore the generality of this relation by manipulating the temporal context within a concurrent-chains procedure through c...

Eight young children who displayed destructive behavior maintained, at least in part, by negative reinforcement received long-term functional communication training (FCT). During FCT, the children completed a portion of a task and then touched a communication card attached to a microswitch to obtain brief breaks. Prior to and intermittently through...

Animal models of relapse to drug seeking have focused primarily on relapse induced by exposure to drugs, drug-associated cues or contexts, and foot-shock stress. However, relapse in human drug abusers is often precipitated by loss of alternative non-drug reinforcement. The present experiment used a novel 'resurgence' paradigm to examine relapse to...

Resurgence is the reappearance of an extinguished behavior when an alternative behavior reinforced during extinction is subsequently placed on extinction. Resurgence is of particular interest because it may be a source of relapse to problem behavior following treatments involving alternative reinforcement. In this article we develop a quantitative...

Drug-related stimuli seem to contribute to the persistence of drug seeking and relapse. Behavioral momentum theory is a framework for understanding how the discriminative-stimulus context in which operant behavior occurs governs the persistence of that behavior. The theory suggests that both resistance to change and relapse are governed by the Pavl...

Stimuli associated with primary reinforcers appear themselves to acquire the capacity to strengthen behavior. This paper reviews research on the strengthening effects of conditioned reinforcers within the context of contemporary quantitative choice theories and behavioral momentum theory. Based partially on the finding that variations in parameters...

Previous experiments on behavioral momentum have shown that relative resistance to extinction of operant behavior in the presence of a discriminative stimulus depends upon the baseline rate or magnitude of reinforcement associated with that stimulus (i.e., the Pavlovian stimulus-reinforcer relation). Recently, we have shown that relapse of operant...

Previous experiments on behavioral momentum have shown that relative resistance to extinction of operant behavior in the presence of a stimulus depends on the rate of reinforcement associated with that stimulus, even if some of those reinforcers occur independently of the behavior. We present three experiments examining whether the rate of reinforc...

Stimuli uncorrelated with reinforcement have been shown to enhance response rates and resistance to disruption; however, the effects of different rates of stimulus presentations have not been assessed. In two experiments, we assessed the effects of adding different rates of response-dependent brief stimuli uncorrelated with primary reinforcement on...

Previous studies with concurrent-chains procedures have shown that preference for a terminal-link signaling a higher reinforcement rate decreases as initial-link durations increase. Using a concurrent-chains procedure, the present experiment examined the effects of manipulating initial-link duration on preference and resistance to disruption with r...

Environmental change is accelerating due to anthropogenic influence. Species that have greater behavioral flexibility may be better adapted to exploit new or constantly changing habitats. There are few mammals and even fewer carnivores that better illustrate widespread adaptability and behavioral flexibility in the wake of human disturbance than co...

Persistent drug seeking is a defining property of substance abuse and is generally thought to depend, in part, on exposure to drug-associated contexts. Behavioral momentum theory provides a set of methods and a theoretical framework for understanding how stimulus contexts contribute to the persistence of operant behavior. Earlier research has exten...

This volume is a special issue representing some of the best research presented at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Society for the Quantitative Analyses of Behavior (SQAB), which took place in Chicago, IL, May 22–24 of 2008. The continuing growth in poster submissions encouraged us to add a new poster session that occurred during our opening recepti...

In previous research on resistance to change, differential disruption of operant behavior by satiation has been used to assess the relative strength of responding maintained by different rates or magnitudes of the same reinforcer in different stimulus contexts. The present experiment examined resistance to disruption by satiation of one reinforcer...

Three experiments assessed the relation between the differential outcomes effect and resistance to change of delayed matching-to-sample performance. Pigeons produced delayed matching-to-sample trials by responding on variable interval schedules in two components of a multiple schedule. In the same-outcome component, the probability of reinforcement...