Examining combinations of stimulus and contingency changes with children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and pigeons

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 effects during treatments with differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA). Experiment 1 demonstrated a greater return in arbitrary target responding in children diagnosed with autism when both changing context and removing alternative reinforcement compared with only a change in context. Experiment 2 evaluated a similar comparison by exposing pigeons to changes in context and changes in the contingency for alternative responding in isolation or combination. Consistent with Experiment 1, target responding increased most when combining contingency and context changes. Experiment 3 demonstrated greater increases in target responding with pigeons when returning to the training context and omitting higher compared with lower percentages of alternative reinforcers. This study replicated and extended previous findings that revealed resurgence of target behavior is greater when combining context changes and greater reductions in alternative reinforcement. These findings imply that context changes can exacerbate relapse with DRA treatments resulting from decreases in alternative reinforcement either through breakdowns in treatment integrity or planned maintenance strategies.