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An Investigation of Contextual Stimuli During Treatment with the Explicitly Unpaired Procedure

An Investigation of Contextual Stimuli During Treatment with the Explicitly Unpaired Procedure. Marlo Cutler Baldwin-Wallace College. Human phobias. Human phobias are frequently the result of simple Pavlovian conditioning. Animal (NS)  bark or bite (US)  pain or distress

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An Investigation of Contextual Stimuli During Treatment with the Explicitly Unpaired Procedure

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  1. An Investigation of Contextual Stimuli During Treatment with the Explicitly Unpaired Procedure Marlo Cutler Baldwin-Wallace College

  2. Human phobias • Human phobias are frequently the result of simple Pavlovian conditioning. • Animal (NS)  bark or bite (US)  pain or distress • Animal (CS)  anticipatory fear (CR)

  3. Fear Conditioning • Conditioned Suppression Procedure (Estes & Skinner, 1941) • NS  no particular response • NS (light) +US (shock)  UR (jump) • CS (light)  CR (anticipatory freezing)

  4. Fear Conditioning Cont. • Traditional extinction of freezing: CS  no US • Freezing decreases over trials. • Problem: there is frequently a relapse of fear outside of the extinction context. • The Explicitly Unpaired Procedure (EU): CS  no US and no CS  US • Research has shown this procedure to prevent the relapse of fear outside of the extinction context. • Why is this the case?

  5. The EU Procedure • Purpose: To assess the importance of contextual conditioning in the EU procedure. • Hypothesis: Exposure to the extinction context will retard context conditioning during the EU procedure and will increase relapse of fear. • Thomas, Longo, & Ayres hypothesis (2004)

  6. Procedure

  7. Training Contexts

  8. Results

  9. Results cont. • Subjects that received exposure to the extinction context as well as those who received exposure to a novel context showed renewal of fear. • All extinction procedures resulted in less freezing during the test than a forgetting control.

  10. Conclusions • The results may indicate that context conditioning is one important element of the EU procedure. • A replication of this study is currently being conducted using contexts that have been made more different and to equate total exposure to the test context.

  11. Implications for therapy • Prolonged exposure to the treatment setting prior to explicitly unpaired training may increase relapse. • Exposure therapies that require the client to face their fear directly are more likely to yield long-term gains than therapies that utilize relaxation or other techniques to minimize the aversiveness of treatment.

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