A Comprehensive Systematic Review of Procedures and Analyses Used in Basic and Preclinical Studies of Resurgence, 1970-2020

This page contains the information gathered during a systematic review of the literature regarding resurgence phenomena. Interested readers may search and query the available data for further information regarding individual studies.

Abstract: Resurgence is the return of a previously reinforced response as conditions worsen for an alternative response, such as the introduction of extinction, reductions in reinforcement, or punishment. As a procedure, resurgence has been used to model behavioral treatments and understandbehavioral processes contributing both to relapse of problem behavior and flexibility during problem-solving. Despite the study of resurgence for over half a century, there have been no systematic reviews of the basic/preclinical research on resurgence. To characterize the procedural and analytic methods used in this area of research, we performed a systematic review of the basic/preclinical research on resurgence consistent with the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. We identified 120 articles consisting of 200 experiments that presented novel empirical research, examined operant behavior, and included standard elements of a resurgence procedure. We reported prevalence and trends in over 60 categories, including participant characteristics (e.g., species, sample size, disability), designs (e.g., single subject, group), procedural characteristics (e.g., responses, reinforcer types, control conditions), criteria defining resurgence (e.g., single test, multiple tests, relative to control), and analytic strategies (e.g., inferential statistics, quantitative analysis, visual inspection). We discuss the relevance of existing procedural and analytic methods for future laboratory research and development of translational and clinical research on resurgence of problem behavior.

Instructions: A search-able table including studies and features of studies is provided in the space below. The table can be sorted based on any of the columns. Column labels are defined in Supplementary Materials.