Reinstatement as renewal produced by associative changes in context.

Abstract

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that reinstatement, the recovery of an extinguished response to a cue with the introduction of the unsignaled outcome used in conditioning, can result from context-outcome associations changing between extinction and testing resulting in a renewal of responding to the extinguished cue. The experiments manipulated whether context-outcome associations at testing were the same as those in conditioning or extinction. Using a space-shooter video game, participants learned to press a key in response to a spaceship (O1) which was signaled by a sensor cue (R) in conditioning and then received extinction where R appeared alone. In both phases, context-outcome associations were manipulated by unsignaled presentations of another spaceship (O2, associated with a different key), or its absence. In a third phase, context-outcome associations in the absence of R and O1 were manipulated to be the same as those in conditioning or extinction. When O2 was present during conditioning and immediately before test, but absent in extinction, a strong recovery of extinguished R-O1 responding was observed. When O2 was absent during conditioning and immediately before testing, but present in extinction, a smaller recovery of R-O1 was observed. When a new spaceship (O3) was introduced immediately before testing, a recovery of R-O1 was observed only if O2 had been present in conditioning, suggesting that the effects observed were not simply disinhibition of responding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).