A Replication of a Nonsequential Renewal Model and a Failure to Attenuate Nonsequential Renewal with Extinction Cues

Laboratory models of renewal are critical for understanding this form of behavioral relapse and informing clinical practice to reduce the occurrence of relapse and facilitate the maintenance of treatment gains. Nonsequential renewal is a modified procedure developed by (Sullivan et al. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 110(1), 74–86 2018) that provides an arrangement to study operant renewal in a manner more consistent with clients receiving clinical services, which involves exposing subjects to treatment and baseline conditions across two or more contexts. Experiment 1 replicated the procedure of (Craig et al. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 112(2), 210–223 2019) to compare ABA renewal of target responding in rats exposed to the nonsequential or sequential renewal procedure. Experiment 2 investigated the use of an olfactory extinction cue in mitigating renewal. In Experiment 1, the Nonsequential Group displayed a greater magnitude of renewal compared to the Sequential Group, consistent with the findings from (Craig et al. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 110(1), 74–86 2019) but inconsistent with those from (Sullivan et al. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 110(1), 74–86 2018) with human participants. The extinction cue did not mitigate renewal in Experiment 2. The use of a laboratory model of renewal that is more analogous to clinical settings may be valuable in a translational approach to investigating relapse-prevention techniques.