I collect pins for my backpack. One is an orange triceratops, standing on some books. Triceratops, T-Rex (plural: T-Rex? T-Rexs? T-Rexi?), pterodactyl (thank you VERY much English language). They’re all cool. Unfortunately, after an extinction-level event they are no longer around.

Is this blog artfully meshing dinosaurs with behavior analysis? I want to say yes, but no. Instead, we’re talking about terms. Extinction in behavior analysis has nothing to do with dinosaurs (if you have research to prove me wrong, send it my way). Extinction involves the withholding of reinforcement for a previously reinforced behavior, resulting in a decrease in how often that behavior occurs in the future.

At our dining room table, I put down placemats. In the past, I would get them by opening a drawer in my kitchen cabinets. Hello, reinforcement. A few weeks ago, we moved some things around in my kitchen. Placemats were moved to a server in the dining room. Now when I set the table, I don’t go to the server. I went to that drawer - because when I went to that drawer in the past, I got the placemats – my behavior was reinforced. Now, going to that drawer is no longer reinforced. When I open it, no placemats, no reinforcement.

This is extinction. My behavior (opening the drawer) was reinforced in the past (access to placemats). That reinforcer is no longer delivered, but ‘withheld’. My behavior doesn’t change immediately. I still go to that drawer occasionally because my history of getting a placemat there is SO strong – I’ve been doing it forever. Over time, that behavior decreases and going to the dining room server increases.

Why don’t I go to the server right away? Resistance to extinction. The longer you’ve been doing something, the longer it takes for that behavior to decrease. Think about it – you’ve been doing this for a very long time, and it WORKED. It’ll take time for that change to take hold – a few hours later, a few days, or maybe weeks.

When I open the drawer to find that no placemats are there, I might ‘try harder’. I might open other drawers. I might yell to my wife to ask where they are. This is an extinction burst. Behavior gets worse before it gets better. When your child screams at you to open the refrigerator, and you open it, they are more likely to scream in the future. If you do NOT open it when they scream, what might happen? They may scream louder, or longer, or swear, or kick the refrigerator. It’s important not to reinforce these behaviors, since that will teach them that THAT behavior is now what works. They won’t scream anymore – screaming doesn’t work. But they’ll kick the refrigerator more often since that now works.

Extinction is hard and there are certainly issues with its use (we’ll cover that in another blog). But, if you use it, consistency is key. We don’t want to wind up like the dinosaurs…