How long does conditioned behavior continue in the absence of negative reinforcement?
It depends on the effort put forth to reverse the conditioned behavior. A person or animal that is passive and does nothing to reverse or has no one try to help reverse the conditioning can show signs of the conditioning indefinitely. The reversing of this conditioning is actually just a new form of conditioning to ignore the negatives that they have been exposed to. Just removing the negative reinforcement may not remove the conditioned behavior, because if the reinforcement returns, so will the behavior. The best way to reverse the conditioning is to expose the person or animal to positive reinforcement, but even still, traces of past conditioning may linger.
