Field Guide · Glossary
Extinction
Learning scienceThe fading of a behavior after the reinforcement that maintained it stops arriving.
How it works
A behavior persists because it works. When it stops working entirely, it gradually stops happening. The difficulty in practice is that it has to stop working every time: a behavior reinforced occasionally is being maintained rather than extinguished, and intermittent reinforcement makes a behavior harder to extinguish rather than easier. It may get worse before it gets better, which is the extinction burst, though that is less reliable than training folklore suggests. It also produces frustration, which is why pairing it with something else to reinforce is usually kinder and quicker.
What it looks like
A dog barks at the table during meals because barking has occasionally produced food. Once nobody at the table ever responds, the barking increases for several days and then declines. One person feeding the dog once resets the process.
Commonly confused with
- Extinction burst
- Extinction is the whole process of a behavior fading. The extinction burst is one stage some behaviors pass through on the way, a temporary increase in intensity, rather than a step every behavior takes.
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