A review of investigations of operant renewal with human participants: Implications for theory and practice.
Operant renewal is the recurrence of a previously eliminated target behavior as a function of changing stimulus contexts. Renewal as a model of treatment relapse in humans suggests that a change in stimulus conditions or context is sufficient to produce relapse of a previously eliminated maladaptive behavior. The extent to which general findings from operant renewal studies involving nonhuman animal subjects are supported by relapse studies involving human participants is unknown. We conducted a systematic review of studies demonstrating or mitigating operant renewal in human participants in peer-reviewed studies found in PsycINFO, ERIC, PubMed, and Scopus between 1980 and 2019. We identified 12 studies involving 61 participants and 93 cases of operant renewal. We coded descriptive data on participant and study characteristics and calculated summary statistics. Results indicated that the renewal effect was a robust phenomenon, supported by demonstrations in both clinical and human-laboratory studies, and across a variety of variables and experimental preparations. However, there were relatively few studies involving human participants that attempted to reduce or eliminate renewal of clinically meaningful behavior. We discuss variables relevant for studying renewal in socially meaningful contexts, practical limitations of observing the renewal effect in real-world settings, implications for theoretical models of renewal, and identify barriers to methodology unique to human participants. We provide directions for future research related to implementing and translating nonhuman animal studies of renewal to applied settings.