"Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times". - Mark Twain

While not an episode about nicotene withdrawal, this week we're talking all about research describing the phenomenon of relapse. Or is it renewal? Resurgence? All of the above? Basically any situation in which behavior, once thought removed from a repertoire, comes screaming back into reality. Regardless, teaching skills without planning for generalization to different contexts or being unsure when extinction will come into play is a recipe for disaster. Fortunately, some great researchers have been in the behvaior analysis kitchen trying to cook up the perfect meal of learning.

This episode is available for 1.0 LEARNING CEU.

Articles discussed this episode:

Shahan, T.A. (2020). Relapse: An introduction. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 113, 8-14. doi: 10.1002/jeab.578

Mitteer, D.R., Greer, B.D., Fisher, W.W., Briggs, A.D., & Wacker, D.P. (2018). A laboratory model for evaluating relapse of undesirable caregiver behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 110, 252-266. doi: 10.1002/jeab.462

Podlesnik, C.A., Ritchey, C.M., Muething, C., & Falligant, J.M. (2025). Different criteria affect prevalence of relapse of behavior targeted for treatment. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 58, 225-231. doi: 10.1002/jaba.2927

Muething, C., Call, N., Ritchey, C.M., Pavlov, A., Bernstein, A.M., & Podlesnik, C.A. (2022). Prevalence of relapse of automatically maintained behavior resulting from context changes. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 55, 138-153. doi: 10.1002/jaba.887

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