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6.8: Extinction

  • Page ID
    370967
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    Section Learning Objectives
    • Define extinction.
    • Clarify which type of reinforcement extinguishes quicker.
    • Clarify what the partial reinforcement effect is and an explanation for it.
    • Define extinction burst.
    • Define spontaneous recovery.

    Extinction

    First, extinction is when something that we do, say, think/feel has not been reinforced for some time. As you might expect, the behavior will begin to weaken and eventually stop when this occurs. Does extinction just occur as soon as the anticipated reinforcer is not there? The answer is yes and no, depending on whether we are talking about continuous or partial reinforcement. With which type of reinforcement would you expect a person to stop responding to immediately if reinforcement is not there? Do you suppose continuous? Or partial?

    The answer is continuous. If a person is used to receiving reinforcement every time the correct behavior is made and then suddenly no reinforcer is delivered, he or she will cease the response immediately. Obviously then, with partial, a response continues being made for a while, called the partial reinforcement effect. The person may think the schedule has simply changed. ‘Maybe I am not paid weekly now. Maybe it changed to biweekly and I missed the email.’ Due to this, we say that intermittent or partial reinforcement shows resistance to extinction, meaning the behavior does weaken, but gradually. One explanation for why this occurs is the discrimination hypothesis which says that it is more difficult to discriminate between extinction and the partial schedule than it is extinction and the continuous schedule (Mowrer & Jones, 1945).

    As you might expect, if reinforcement “mistakenly” occurs after extinction has started, the behavior will re-emerge. Consider your parents for a minute. To stop some undesirable behavior you made in the past surely they took away some privilege. I bet the bad behavior ended too. But did you ever go to your grandparent’s house and grandma or grandpa, or worse, BOTH….. took pity on you and let you play your video games for an hour or two (or something equivalent)? I know my grandmother used to. What happened to that bad behavior that had disappeared? Did it start again and your parents could not figure out why? Don’t worry. Someday your parents will get you back and do the same thing with your kid(s). ☺

    When extinction first occurs, the person or animal is not sure what is going on and begins to make the response more often (frequency), longer (duration), and more intensely. This is called an extinction burst. We might even see novel behaviors such as aggression. I mean, who likes having their privileges taken away? That will likely create frustration which can lead to aggression.

    One final point about extinction is important. You must know what the reinforcer is and be able to eliminate it. Say your child bullies other kids at school. Since you cannot be there to stop the behavior, and most likely the teacher cannot be either if done on the playground at recess, the behavior will continue. Your child will continue bullying because it makes him or her feel better about themselves (a PR).

    With all this in mind, you must have wondered if extinction is the same as punishment. With both, you are stopping an undesirable behavior, correct? Yes, but that is the only similarity they share. Punishment reduces unwanted behavior by either giving something bad or taking away something good. Extinction is simply when you take away the reinforcer for the behavior. This could be seen as taking away something good, but the good in punishment is not usually what is reinforcing the bad behavior. If a child misbehaves (the bad behavior) for attention (the PR), then with extinction you would not give the PR (meaning nothing happens) while with punishment, you might slap his or her behind (a PP) or taking away tv time (an NP).

    Spontaneous Recovery

    You might have wondered if the person or animal will try to make the response again in the future even though it stopped being reinforced in the past. The answer is yes and is called spontaneous recovery. One of two outcomes is possible. First, the response is made and nothing happens. In this case, extinction continues. Second, the response is made and a reinforcer is delivered. The response re-emerges. Consider a rat that has been trained to push a lever to receive a food pellet. If we stop delivering the food pellets, in time, the rat will stop pushing the lever. The rat will push the lever again sometime in the future and if food is delivered, the behavior spontaneously recovers. Hence, we can say that spontaneous recovery shows that extinction is not simply forgetting to make the response to receive reinforcement. The learning is still there and can be accessed again if needed.


    This page titled 6.8: Extinction is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Lee W. Daffin Jr. via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.