A within-subject comparison of three different schedules of reinforcement of drug abstinence using cigarette smoking as an exemplar.

In this experiment we compared three different schedules of reinforcement for promoting and sustaining short-term drug abstinence. For pragmatic reasons, cigarette smoking was studied as an exemplar of drug self-administration. The three schedules studied were a fixed magnitude of reinforcement for abstinence, a progressive increase in magnitude of reinforcement for abstinence with a reset contingency for drug use, and a progressive increase in magnitude of reinforcement for abstinence without a reset contingency. Eighteen cigarette smokers experienced the three schedules in a counterbalanced order. Each schedule was in effect for 5 consecutive days (M-F), during which time abstinence was reinforced according to the different schedules of reinforcement. The total amount of reinforcement (money) available was the same during each condition. The progressive magnitude with a reset schedule was more effective than the other two schedules in sustaining an initial period of abstinence. These results systematically replicate and extend those from prior studies demonstrating the efficacy of schedules incorporating a progressively increasing magnitude of reinforcement with a reset contingency for sustaining initial drug abstinence, and demonstrate the importance of the reset contingency to that effect.