The impact of an extinction reminder on AAB renewal is sensitive to the level of association with extinction

TL;DR

This study shows that reminding participants of extinction can reduce response recovery, but only if the reminder is strongly associated with extinction.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel approach to understanding how extinction reminders affect response recovery in AAB renewal designs.

Findings

An extinction reminder reduced the AAB renewal effect when the stimulus was fully associated with extinction.

The reductive effect was not observed when the extinction reminder was only partially associated with extinction.

Context changes influenced the effectiveness of extinction reminders in reducing response recovery.

Abstract

An experiment using a predictive learning task with college students evaluated the impact of a stimulus associated with extinction on an AAB renewal design. Four groups of participants learned a specific relationship between two cues (X and Y) and two outcomes (O1 and O2) in Context A during the first phase. Subsequently, both cues were subjected to extinction in the same Context A. During the Test, extinction was in effect for both cues; one group experienced it in Context A (AAA), while the other three groups were tested in a second Context B. We observed a reduction in the AAB renewal effect when participants received a stimulus associated with extinction (AAB*), but not when testing involved presenting a new stimulus (AAB). However, the reductive effect of the extinction reminder was not observed when the stimulus was presented only during the 75% of the extinction trials (AAB*75). These findings suggest that, under certain circumstances, the level of association of the extinction reminder with extinction might affect its efficacy in reducing response recovery.

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