The effect of a conditioned fear inhibitor (CS-) during response prevention upon extinction of an avoidance response

Pairing a Pavlovian safety signal (CS—) with a response prevention period was contrasted with other response prevention procedures to determine relative effectiveness for the elimination of learned avoidance behavior. After acquiring a one-way avoidance response, five groups of ten rats received various blocking or control treatments and were then compared on extinction performance. The four blocking treatments included blocking paired with a safety signal; blocking only; blocking paired with a novel stimulus; and blocking paired with a preexposed noncontingent tone. The fifth group served as a handling control. Compared to the handling control, all four blocking groups reached extinction criterion in fewer trials. Further, the safety signal group extinguished faster than the blocking only group or the blocking with noncontingent tone group. Results were viewed as an indication of the potential efficacy of pairing-conditioned fear-inhibiting cues with response prevention procedures for the elimination of fear-motivated behavior. Implications for behavioral therapy techniques were discussed.     

Extinction of avoidance behavior and the problem of residual fear

According to two-factor theory, avoidance responding is predicated on a conjoint relationship between Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning. Recently a variety of evidence has indicated that these processes are independently subject to experimental manipulations, both during acquisition and extinction. The latter finding is paralleled in the clinicial literature by the observation that the elimination of an avoidance response does not adequately reflect concurrent changes in autonomic and verbal behavior. These findings suggest the need for multiple measures of anxiety in assessing the effect of experimental and therapeutic operations on avoidance behavior. This paper also calls attention to the discriminative and reinforcing properties of the CS in an attempt to account for these findings.