Extinction Side-Effects

Answer

According to Lang (2017) extinction denotes the procedure through which an individual allows a certain behavior to completely disappear or to decrease by withholding reinforcement. The practice of extinction is effective in eliminating unwanted behavior; however, a person is advised to consider the side effects. It is upon this background that this paper describes the six main side-effects of extinction namely, extinction burst, increase in variability, change in emotional behavior, aggression, resurgence, and sadness or depression. The paper further explains and provides justification how the side effects may be problematic or beneficial to the individual.

Extinction burst refers to the increase in frequency of the response to a given stimuli even when it is non-existent. This happens when a person’s reactions to a particular stimulus was motivated by a reward. In such a case, even when the behavior is extinct, the person is likely to continue to react in the same manner with the expectation of a reward.  Extinction bursts could be beneficial in reinforcing positive behavior or extinction of unwanted mannerisms. The second side effect is increase in variability. Kanter, Cautilli, Busch and Baruch (2011) define variability as the degree to which individual’s behavior differ from each other. It further refers to the individual variation in emotions and behavior during the extinction process. It is noted that when a person is subjected to a different stimulus, he or she will change the behavior to achieve a new state of comfort. This side-effect could be beneficial in reinforcing new positive changes or problematic when a person tries to replace the old behavior with an undesirable alternative.

The third side-effect of extinction is change in emotional behavior. The changes arising in the visceral motor or the autonomic system leads to adjustments in emotions of the person. This includes an increase in cutaneous blood flow making them turn pale or plush, decrease in heart rates, sweating, gastrointestinal motility and other accompanying emotions (Kanter et al. 2011). These changes are often considered as withdrawal symptoms. Changes in emotional behavior are problematic to the individual since they disrupt their normal emotional cycles.

Aggression arises from the frustration associated with the extinction of a certain behavior. The body is not yet used to the new conditioning thus, the individual might show outbursts of anger and aggression towards others. This could range from physical to verbal aggression towards others. These side-effects are problematic since they could cause social disorder. The fifth side effect of extinction is resurgence. The term resurgence refers to the reappearance of other behaviors to replace a behavior that is extinct. Mostly, the person obtains the behavior that has been helping in the reinforcement of the extinction. Lerman, Iwata and Wallace, (2019) explain that in some cases, an old behavior recurs to replace the extinct one. This means that the extinction of one behavior paves way for the resurgence of another old behavior that was extinct. Resurgence as a side effect could be beneficial is a bad behavior is replaced by a resurging new behavior. On the contrary, it is problematic when a bad behavior is replaced by a resurging bad behavior.

The sixth side effect of extinction is a prolonged state of sadness or depression. The changes associated with extinction could potentially lead to symptoms of depression. In some cases, the sadness and resultant depression arises from fear conditioning. Additionally, the sadness could arise from the fear of change or the cyclic activities involved in the change process.