A fundamental role for context in instrumental learning and extinction

• The article reviews research on the contextual control of instrumental (free-operant) behavior.
• Context change after extinction reduces extinction performance.
• Evidence suggests that an inhibitory context-response association develops in extinction.
• Context change also reduces instrumental behavior after conditioning (before extinction).
• Evidence suggests that the context might be associated with the response and/or hierarchically signal the response–reinforcer relation.

The purpose of this article is to review recent research that has investigated the effects of context change on instrumental (operant) learning. The first part of the article discusses instrumental extinction, in which the strength of a reinforced instrumental behavior declines when reinforcers are withdrawn. The results suggest that extinction of either simple or discriminated operant behavior is relatively specific to the context in which it is learned: As in prior studies of Pavlovian extinction, ABA, ABC, and AAB renewal effects can all be observed. Further analysis supports the idea that the organism learns to refrain from making a specific response in a specific context, or in more formal terms, an inhibitory context-response association. The second part of the article then discusses research suggesting that the context also controls instrumental behavior before it is extinguished. Several experiments demonstrate that a context switch after either simple or discriminated operant training causes a decrement in the strength of the response. Over a range of conditions, the animal appears to learn a direct association between the context and the response. Under some conditions, it can also learn a hierarchical representation of context and the response–reinforcer relation. Extinction is still more context-specific than conditioning, as indicated by ABC and AAB renewal. Overall, the results establish that the context can play a significant role in both the acquisition and extinction of operant behavior.