EXPLORING RELAPSE IN THE HUMAN LABORATORY: NOTES FROM A SYMPOSIUM

Abstract

“Relapse” broadly refers to the recurrence of pre-intervention behavior patterns when some aspect of the intervention is changed. Because relapse poses a challenge to the long-term maintenance of behavior-analytic treatment effects, a considerable amount of basic, translational, and applied research has been dedicated to understanding why it happens and what can be done to prevent it. A growing proportion of that research is conducted with humans in laboratory settings. Human laboratory analyses of relapse, however, come packaged with nuances that may not be immediately obvious to readers or researchers who aim to establish new lines of related research. This project is a symposium of sorts that focuses specifically on these nuances. Four researchers were asked to reflect on their experiences conducting laboratory analyses of relapse with human participants. The goal of this project was to provide information that may be helpful to researchers who may be interested in developing lines of human-laboratory research on relapse. This information included idiosyncratic factors researchers consider when studying relapse of human behavior in the laboratory as well as the strengths and weaknesses of various laboratory methods for doing so. The researchers’ perspectives are synthesized in a post-symposium discussion. We encourage further development of a tight-knit community of human-laboratory relapse researchers to help overcome barriers to research in this context.