PREVALENCE OF THE EXTINCTION BURST AND ITS ATTENUATION DURING TREATMENT

Although extinction has been an effective treatment for a variety of b ehavior disorders, its use may be associated with several adverse side effects, the most common being an initial increase in the frequency o f the target response, called an ''extinction burst.'' We attempted to determine the prevalence of the extinction burst in applied research and its possible attenuation with other operant procedures. An analysi s of 113 sets of extinction data indicated that bursting may not be as common as previously assumed (it occurred in 24% of the cases) and ma y be less likely when extinction is implemented with alternative proce dures rather than as the sole intervention (bursting was evident in 12 % of the former cases and 36% of the latter).