Reappraisal facilitates extinction in healthy and socially anxious individuals
Section snippets
General introduction
Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent, severely debilitating, and involve considerable societal costs (e.g., Konnopka, Leichsenring, Leibing, & König, 2009). Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has emerged as the treatment of choice for these disorders (e.g., Butler, Chapman, Forman, & Beck, 2006). Core components of CBT are cognitive techniques such as cognitive restructuring and behavioral techniques such as repeated exposure to feared stimuli. It is likely that cognitive and behavioral
Study 1: reappraisal during acquisition
Study 1 explored the suitability of the social conditioning task for generating reliable and durable EC effects, and for examining reappraisal. Three conditions were repeatedly presented within participants (explained in more detail below). Two conditions, termed CS_Neg and CS_Neu, simulated the CS+ (the CS that predicts the US during acquisition) and the CS− (the CS that is never paired with the US) of conventional conditioning designs. The difference in negative valence between CS_Neg and
Study 2: reappraisal during extinction
Despite the significance of the modulating role of reappraisal during acquisition, as shown in Study 1, much higher practical importance is attributed to the extinction phase, considered the laboratory analogue of exposure therapy, which is typically undertaken long after the original acquisition of fear. In addition, to address limitations of Study 1, Study 2 used tighter control, with individual sessions in the laboratory, doubled the number of extinction trials, balanced participant gender,
Study 3: conditioning and reappraisal in social anxiety
Building on these findings, in Study 3 we asked whether reappraisal would facilitate extinction learning in individuals with social anxiety. In particular, we examined whether individuals with elevated social anxiety would show an extinction deficit in the present social conditioning task, and whether reappraisal would help in compensating for this deficit. With regard to extinction learning in social anxiety, we predicted elevated negative valence ratings in the CS_Neg condition relative to
General discussion
The present research sought to examine the interaction of reappraisal, representing a core process in cognitive therapy, with Pavlovian conditioning, representing a core process in behavioral exposure therapy. To integrate these different processes in a meaningful, externally valid way, we created a specific experimental context: a social conditioning task using social stimuli as CSs and USs that we expected to generate strong and durable evaluative conditioning (EC) effects.
Results revealed
Role of funding organizations
JG provided funds for the present study.
Acknowledgments
No acknowledgements.
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How can neurobiology of fear extinction inform treatment?
2022, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral ReviewsCitation Excerpt :The inclusion of cognitive reappraisal during extinction learning/exposure trials is at odds with inhibitory retrieval models to the extent that it weakens US expectancy violation, although empirical investigation of this assumption is lacking (Craske et al., 2014). Cognitive reappraisal of CS or US valuation (without changing US expectancy) has been shown to facilitate laboratory based extinction (subjective ratings) in healthy controls (Blechert et al., 2015; Sun, 2019) and socially anxious individuals (Blechert et al., 2015). Corresponding evaluation of cognitive reappraisal of US expectancy in laboratory-based extinction is missing.
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2020, Learning and MotivationCitation Excerpt :This difference has led to the idea that not only an association between CS and US but also a proposition such as “the CS is pleasant” underly EC (e.g., De Houwer et al., 2001; Gast et al., 2012; but see Mitchell et al., 2009). However, several recent studies reported extinction in EC (Blechert et al., 2007; Blechert et al., 2015; Gawronski & Mitchell, 2014), and a meta-analysis supports this (e.g., Hofmann et al., 2010). The present study investigated the cause of extinction as well as the resistance to extinction in EC.