Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Kathryn Kestner

Committee Member

Claire St. Peter

Committee Member

Barry Edelstein

Abstract

Renewal is a type of behavioral relapse that is dependent on changes in contextual stimuli in the environment. The current study investigated ABA renewal of responding that had been previously reduced by a differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) procedure. ABA renewal refers to the context associated with three phases of behavioral treatment; Context A is present during baseline, Context B is present during treatment, and the post-treatment context returns to Context A (i.e., renewal test). Undergraduate college students participated in a Zoom video call during which they responded by clicking the mouse on a rectangle in a computer program created in Visual Basic©. Each session consisted of baseline, DRO, and a renewal test phase. In baseline, the target response was reinforced according to a fixed-interval (FI) 10-s schedule. In the DRO phase, points were delivered contingent on refraining from clicking on the target response during the 10-s omission interval. The same DRO contingency was in effect during the renewal test. A change in the color of the screen background served as the contextual change between baseline, treatment, and renewal test phases. This study assessed the occurrence of renewal via visual inspection of graphed data. Renewal occurred for all six included participants and was transient for five of six participants. Proportion of baseline and reinforcement rate data are presented in addition to target and untargeted response rate. Implications for clinical application and future research directions are discussed.

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