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Exposure Techniques: The Role of Extinction Learning

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Exposure Therapy

Abstract

In this chapter, we review studies conducted in humans and other animals (mainly rats) in order to characterise current understanding on experimental extinction, and the possible implications for exposure-based therapies. Extinction learning, rather than producing unlearning (or erasure) of the original S–O association, seems to be best captured as new learning which is highly context dependent. Put it precisely, when the extinguished stimulus is tested outside of the physical or temporal context in which extinction took place, recovery from extinction is observed. In the second part of the chapter, we review several manipulations which have proven successful in the laboratory to attenuate the recovery from extinction observed under diverse circumstances. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for current theoretical approaches to extinction, with a special emphasis on two families of approaches that succeed in explaining some critical findings (but not all) in experimental extinction.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the drug-addiction literature, the term reinstatement has been adopted to refer to any recovery from extinction achieved by the presentation of an event that was present during drug self-­administration, namely the drug itself (proper reinstatement) but also stimuli, contexts, and stress. See Crombag et al. (2008) for a revision of these findings.

  2. 2.

    Dr MA Wood has made the interesting suggestion (Wood 2011; personal communication Jan 4) that the fact that reacquisition may be slower after extinction cannot be taken as evidence of erasure; because erasure should return the memory to a zero state after which reacquisition should proceed in the same way as a control group.

  3. 3.

    In the associative-learning literature, inhibition refers to the explicit preventative relation between a stimulus and the outcome, which is inferred when the putative inhibitor attenuates the response elicited by an excitatory cue that has been trained separately (summation test), in addition to the putative inhibitor showing retarded emergence of excitatory learning (retardation test).

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AcknowledgmentsGPU was supported by a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (PIEF-GA-2009-237608) awarded by the European Commission. This review reflects only the authors’ views and the European Community is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. The author wishes to thank Anthony Dickinson, Anushka B. P. Fernando, Ralph R. Miller, Melissa A. Wood and the editors of this volume for invaluable comments concerning this chapter.

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  1. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EB, UK

    Gonzalo P. Urcelay

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  1. Praxis für Verhaltenstherapie, Follerstr. 64, Cologne, 50676, Germany

    Peter Neudeck

  2. Inst. Klinische Psychologie und, Psychotherapie, TU Dresden, Chemnitzer Str. 46, Dresden, 01187, Germany

    Hans-Ulrich Wittchen

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© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Urcelay, G.P. (2012). Exposure Techniques: The Role of Extinction Learning. In: Neudeck, P., Wittchen, HU. (eds) Exposure Therapy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3342-2_4

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