Behaviour research and therapy
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The renewal of extinguished conditioned fear with fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli by a context change after extinction.
The acquisition, extinction, and subsequent recovery of conditioned fear can be influenced by the nature of the conditional stimulus (CS) and the context in which the CS is presented. The combined effects of these factors were examined in a differential fear-conditioning procedure with humans. Fear-relevant or fear-irrelevant CSs were followed by a shock unconditional stimulus (US) during acquisition and presented alone during extinction. ⋯ In Experiment 2 (N=72), renewal for fear-relevant stimuli was enhanced when acquisition and test was given in an indoor office context and extinction in an outdoor bush context. The opposite context configuration produced the strongest renewal for fear-irrelevant stimuli. The return of extinguished conditioned fear can occur to fear-relevant stimuli that are commonly associated with clinical fears and its strength may be enhanced when the stimuli are encountered in certain contexts after extinction.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Acceptance versus distraction: brief instructions, metaphors and exercises in increasing tolerance for self-delivered electric shocks.
The current study compared the effects of an acceptance versus distraction rationale on coping with experimentally induced pain. Eighty participants were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: Full-Acceptance, Full-Distraction, Instruction-only-Acceptance, Instruction-only-Distraction and No-Instructions. ⋯ In addition, the participants in both of the acceptance conditions showed lower levels of believability in that they were more likely to continue with the task even when reporting more pain. The results support the prediction that acceptance-based interventions work by undermining the behavioural-control functions of pain-related thoughts and feelings, and call for a systematic analysis of how metaphors and exercises work in analogue research.
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This study compared rates of self-reported childhood maltreatment in three groups diagnosed using semi-structured interviews: binge eating disorder (BED; n=176), night eating syndrome (NES, n=57), and overweight/obese comparison (OC, n=38). We used the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) to assess childhood maltreatment and the Beck Depression Inventory-II to assess depression levels. Reports of maltreatment were common in patients with BED (82%), NES (79%), and OC (71%). ⋯ A higher proportion of the BED group reported emotional neglect and a higher proportion of the NES group reported physical neglect. Depression levels, which were higher in BED and NES than OC, were associated with higher levels of physical and emotional abuse and neglect. In conclusion, reported rates of physical and sexual abuse differed little across groups, whereas reports of neglect and emotional abuse were higher in the BED and NES groups than in the OC group and were associated with elevated depression levels.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Effects of preparatory information and distraction on children's cold-pressor pain outcomes: a randomized controlled trial.
This experimental study investigated whether preparatory sensory information was more effective in managing children's pain when coupled with a distraction technique. Seventy-eight children aged 7-12 years were randomly allocated to 1 of 4 experimental conditions. They were given either a detailed sensory description of an imminent painful event (cold-pressor arm immersion in 10 degrees C water) or control instructions lacking sensory information. ⋯ Children given sensory preparation reported less intense pain when this was coupled with distraction than when it was not. Children with a distraction-based coping style showed greater tolerance when assigned to a condition congruent with their coping style. These findings suggest ways to better prepare children for painful medical procedures.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Interoceptive fear conditioning as a learning model of panic disorder: an experimental evaluation using 20% CO(2)-enriched air in a non-clinical sample.
Despite the role afforded interoceptive fear conditioning in etiologic accounts of panic disorder, there are no good experimental demonstrations of such learning in humans. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the interoceptive conditioning account using 20% carbon dioxide (CO(2))-enriched air as an interoceptive conditioned stimulus (CS) (i.e., physiologically inert 5-s exposures) and unconditioned stimulus (US) (i.e., physiologically prepotent 15-s exposures). Healthy participants (N=42) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a CS-only, contingent CS-US pairings, or unpaired/non-contingent CS and US presentations. ⋯ The explicitly unpaired condition showed even greater electrodermal and evaluative responding during acquisition, and marked resistance to extinction. The latter results are consistent with the possibility that the unpaired procedure constituted a partial reinforcement procedure in which CO(2) onset was paired with more extended CO(2) exposure on 50% of the trials. Overall, the findings are consistent with contemporary learning theory accounts of panic.