Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
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Resurgence is the relapse of a previously reinforced and then extinguished target response when extinguishing a more recently reinforced alternative response. We designed the present study to assess the contribution of stimulus-control and reinforcer-control processes in determining resurgence. In a modified resurgence procedure, we removed the alternative discriminative stimulus signaling alternative reinforcement when extinguishing the alternative response. ⋯ Therefore, the more abrupt resurgence with the modified procedure than with the typical procedure suggests removing the alternative stimulus reduced the competition between alternative and target responding. These findings revealed the importance of adding and removing alternative reinforcement in producing resurgence (reinforcer control) but little influence of simply adding and removing the alternative stimulus (stimulus control). These data suggest that clinicians should consider the long-term availability of the alternative response option when developing differential-reinforcement interventions.