Citation

Gámez AM, Bernal-Gamboa R. Acta Psychol. 2018; 183: 29-36.

Affiliation

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.12.012

PMID

29304448

Abstract

The study of post-extinction recovery effects in humans has received significant attention. For instance, research on reinstatement has increased in the last decade. However, most of the studies focus on the return of fear responses. In the present experiments, we used a videogame task to explore the reinstatement of operant behavior in human participants. In Experiment 1, after participants learned to shoot at enemies, they received an extinction procedure that eliminated the shooting behavior. However, the mere reintroduction of the outcome reinstated the original response. Experiment 2 showed that the reinstatement of instrumental behavior is contextually modulated. Finally, in Experiment 3 we found that presenting a reminder for extinction attenuated the response recovery effect. The overall pattern of results suggests that reinstatement of voluntary actions in humans could be explained by an interference memory framework. In addition, the present data suggest that therapies that use brief reminders of therapeutic intervention could help prevent the reinstatement of unhealthy instrumental behaviors.

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Context; Extinction-cue; Human participants; Instrumental learning; Reinstatement