ORIGINAL ARTICLE The Role of Discriminative Stimuli on Response Patterns in Resurgence James E. King 1 & Linda J. Hayes 1 Published online: 7 March 2016 # Association for Behavior Analysis International 2016 Abstract University students partitioned in four groups were treated to a four-phase resurgence preparation in which three response sequences were sequentially acquired in the first three phases and tested for serial positioning effects and re- sponse variability in terminal resurgence phase. For the three test groups, three colored backgrounds served as the contex- tual stimuli that corresponded to the acquisition of the re- sponse sequences in the initial three phases. In the final resur- gence phase, all response sequences were placed on extinc- tion. The three test groups were re-presented a respective col- ored background found in one of the earlier acquisition phases. The fourth group did not involve any colored back- ground throughout the entire experiment. Across all three test groups, the highest acquired response sequence proportion was correlated with the discriminative stimulus present in the resurgence phase. The no-color group without contextual change across phases showed recency and primacy effects consistent with those found in serial position studies. Moreover, the presence of the discriminative stimulus in the resurgence phase resulted in less variable response sequences relative to the no-color group. These findings support the role of discriminative stimuli in the manner with which response patterns are organized in resurgence. Keywords Resurgence . Renewal . Serial positioning . Human operant Resurgence is generally held as a behavioral effect that in- volves the recurrence of a previously reinforced response when a more recently reinforced alternative response un- dergoes changes in the operant contingency. This paradigm is ascribed to a broad scope of behavioral phenomena ranging from problem solving (Epstein, 1983, 1985), remembering and recalling (Mechner & Jones, 2001), to treatment relapse of previously decremented problem behaviors (Wacker, Harding, Berg, Lee, Schieltz, Padilla, & Shahan, 2011; Volkert, Lerman, Call, & Trosclair-Lasserre, 2009). Given the relevance in these areas concerned by behavioral investi- gators, the subject matter has drawn increased attention in basic and applied research. Procedures that characteristically produce resurgence in- volve a minimum of three phases. 1 Beginning with the training phase, an initial response is acquired by way of rein- forcement. In the following alternative-reinforcement phase, an alternative-response is reinforced and the initial response is placed on extinction resulting in its attenuation. Depending on the research desiderata, the said phase may be repeated to supply the number of alternative-responses required by the study. In the terminal resurgence phase, the prevailing operant contingency for the alternative-response(s) is modified such that the transient recovery of the initial response and its sub- sequent decrement are observed. Although extinction of the last-acquired alternative response has been widely employed 1 Procedural variants include an explicit extinction phase (e.g., Epstein, 1983; Lieving & Lattal, 2003) in which the initial response is placed on extinction and response attenuation is obtained prior to the introduction of the alternative reinforcement phase. See Lattal & St. Peter Pipkin (2009) for further discussion. This paper has not been previously published, is not under review elsewhere, and will not be submitted elsewhere while it is under review by The Psychological Record. * James E. King james_king@nevada.unr.edu 1 Department of Psychology/296, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, NV 89557, USA Psychol Rec (2016) 66:325–335 DOI 10.1007/s40732-016-0175-2