Spontaneous Recovery

Spontaneous recovery is typically defined in relation to “habituation” or the learning to “not respond” to irrelevant environmental stimuli. Spontaneous recovery refers to the reemergence of a previously habituated response. The reappearance of a habituated response occurs following a period of time in which the eliciting stimulus is no longer presented. Spontaneous recovery is a defining characteristic of the “shortlasting” type of habituation in which the eliciting stimulus is presented frequently (i.e., every 5 seconds). If a long period of time (i.e., 24 hours) has elapsed since the last presentation of the eliciting stimulus, and the stimulus is presented once again, the previously habituated response will reoccur and with nearly the same response strength as demonstrated in the initial presentation. The concept of spontaneous recovery is also used in describing the reemergence of previously extinguished conditioned responses in a classical conditioning paradigm and also operant responses. In these instances, the organism seems to have forgotten that the eliciting stimuli were irrelevant (i.e., respondent conditioning) or that the responses were no longer reinforced (i.e., operant conditioning).

As a real-world example of spontaneous recovery of a previously extinguished operant response, consider 6-month-old Jack. Jack had acquired a rather obnoxious behavior of repeatedly throwing his spoon on the floor during mealtimes. His dutiful parents would immediately pick up the spoon, give it back to Jack, and urge him not to do it again. Being quite frustrated by this behavior, Jack's parents consulted a behaviorally oriented child psychologist who immediately recognized how the parents had actually strengthened Jack's spoon throwing behavior. The parents were giving Jack much attention after throwing the spoon along with returning it to him. The child psychologist advised the parents to not return the spoon once it was on the floor and to generally ignore Jack for 60 seconds after it was thrown. The parents observed that over the course of the next week, Jack stopped throwing his spoon altogether. However, shortly thereafter, Jack's aunt Jan came to visit and was quite excited about having a chance to feed Jack and spend some “quality time” with him. At the first meal, Jack immediately threw his spoon on the floor and his Aunt Jan returned it to him with a big smile on her face and with many comments about how cute Jack was. Jack repeatedly threw his spoon on the floor for the rest of that meal and for every meal that Aunt Jan attended. Jack's spoon-throwing behavior “spontaneously recovered” after his parents had successfully extinguished this response in him. Jack's parents insisted that Aunt Jan attend the next visit with the behaviorally oriented child psychologist to learn the error of her ways.