Experimental Renewal in Human Participants

Abstract

Two experiments with human participants are presented that differentiate renewal from other behavioral effects that can produce a response after extinction. Participants played a video game and learned to suppress their behavior when sensor stimuli predicted an attack. Contexts (A, B, & C) were provided by fictitious galaxies where the game play took place. In Experiment 1, participants who received conditioning in A, extinction in B, and testing in A showed some context specificity of conditioning during extinction and a recovery of suppression on test. Experiment 2 demonstrated recovery of extinguished responding when participants were conditioned in A, extinguished in B, and tested in C, a third, neutral context. The experiment also demonstrated that the context of extinction did not control performance by becoming inhibitory. Results are discussed in terms of mechanisms that can produce a response recovery after extinction. The experiments demonstrated a renewal effect: a response recovery that was not attributable to the contexts acting as simple conditioned stimuli and is the first work with human participants to conclusively do so.