Reinstatement (Conditioning)

Reinstatement is the reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response after the unconditioned stimulus is presented on its own, separately from the conditioned stimulus, following extinction training. Reinstatement is understood to work through conditioning to the surrounding context, since cues present when the unconditioned stimulus reappears become associated with it and later evoke the response when the original conditioned stimulus is presented again. Along with the renewal effect and spontaneous recovery, reinstatement is one of several phenomena researchers use to show that extinction does not delete an original fear or drug-related memory but instead produces a new, competing memory that can be overridden, work that has informed understanding of relapse in post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use.