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Safety behaviours preserve threat beliefs: Protection from extinction of human fear conditioning by an avoidance response

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Abstract

A laboratory autonomic conditioning procedure was used to establish fear conditioning in human participants by pairing neutral stimuli with electric shock. Participants were also trained to make a button-press response to avoid shock. A target fear stimulus was then extinguished by presenting it without shock. The experimental group was given the opportunity to make the avoidance response during extinction whereas the control group was not. When the fear stimulus was tested without the response available, the control group showed normal extinction of both shock expectancy ratings and skin conductance responses, but the experimental group showed “protection from extinction”: they continued to give high expectancy ratings and strong skin conductance responses. We interpret this effect as analogous to the role of within-situation safety behaviours in preserving threat beliefs during exposure therapy for anxiety disorders. The results support a cognitive account of learning and anxiety. The procedure provides a potential laboratory model for further examination of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying anxiety and its reduction.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 65 undergraduate students, 42 females and 23 males, who volunteered for the experiment in partial fulfilment of a course requirement.

Apparatus

The apparatus was the same as that described in Lovibond et al. (2008), with some modifications. In brief, participants were tested individually in a darkened room. The CSs were coloured squares of blue, yellow, and green presented on a 38-cm colour computer monitor approximately 100 cm in front of the participant. The squares were approximately

Results

Four participants failed to press the response button at all during the Avoidance acquisition phase, so their data were excluded from further analysis. All remaining participants met the criterion for avoidance learning, with the majority (n = 49) responding on all 6 training trials and the remainder on 5 trials (n = 10) or 4 trials (n = 2). In the Extinction phase, all participants made the avoidance response on all 6 C trials. Four participants failed to meet the criteria for Pavlovian

Discussion

The experiment provided clear evidence for protection from extinction of a Pavlovian fear CS by an instrumental avoidance response. Participants in the Control group showed normal extinction of stimulus C, whereas participants in the Protection group, who made the avoidance response during the Extinction phase, showed little extinction. This effect adds to the evidence for protection from extinction in humans, and extends it from external stimuli to an internal (voluntary) response.

In the

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by grants A10007156 and DP0774395 from the Australian Research Council.

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