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Behaviour Research and Therapy Nov 2023A habitual avoidance component may enforce the persistence of maladaptive avoidance behavior in anxiety disorders. Whether habitual avoidance is acquired more strongly...
BACKGROUND
A habitual avoidance component may enforce the persistence of maladaptive avoidance behavior in anxiety disorders. Whether habitual avoidance is acquired more strongly in anxiety disorders is unclear.
METHODS
Individuals with current social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and/or agoraphobia (n = 62) and healthy individuals (n = 62) completed a devaluation paradigm with extensive avoidance training, followed by the devaluation of the aversive outcome. In the subsequent test phase, habitual response tendencies were inferred from compatibility effects. Neutral control trials were added to assess general approach learning in the absence of previous extensive avoidance training.
RESULTS
The compatibility effects indicating habitual control did not differ between patients with anxiety disorders and healthy controls. Patients showed lower overall approach accuracy, but this effect was unrelated to the compatibility effects.
CONCLUSIONS
In this study, anxiety disorders were characterized by reduced approach but not stronger habitual avoidance. These results do not indicate a direct association between anxiety disorders and the acquisition of pervasive habitual avoidance in this devaluation paradigm.
Topics: Humans; Anxiety Disorders; Panic Disorder; Attention; Agoraphobia; Phobia, Social; Avoidance Learning; Anxiety
PubMed: 37879245
DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2023.104417 -
The Journal of Pain Mar 2024Pain-related avoidance is adaptive when there is a bodily threat, but when it generalizes to safe movements/situations, it may become disabling. Both subclinical...
Pain-related avoidance is adaptive when there is a bodily threat, but when it generalizes to safe movements/situations, it may become disabling. Both subclinical anxiety-a vulnerability marker for chronic pain-and chronic pain are associated with excessive fear generalization to safe stimuli/situations. Previous research focused mainly on passive fear correlates (psychophysiological arousal and self-reports) leaving avoidance behavior poorly understood. Therefore, we tested whether high-anxious individuals generalize their pain-related avoidance behavior more to novel, safe contexts than low-anxious people. In a robotic-arm-reaching task, both groups (low vs high trait anxiety) performed 1 of 3 movements to reach a target. In the threat context (black background), a painful stimulus could be partly/completely prevented by performing more effortful trajectories (longer and more force needed); in the safe context (white background), no pain occurred. Generalization of avoidance was tested in 2 novel contexts (light/dark gray backgrounds). We assessed pain expectancy, pain-related fear, startle eyeblink responses for all trajectories, and avoidance behavior (ie, maximal deviation from shortest trajectory). Results indicated that differential fear and expectancy selectively generalized to the novel context resembling the original threat context in both groups. Interestingly and in contrast with the verbal reports, high-anxious participants avoided more in the novel context resembling the original safe context, but not in the 1 resembling the threat context. No generalization emerged in the startle data. Because excessive pain-related avoidance specifically may cause withdrawal from daily life activities, these findings suggest that high-anxious individuals may be vulnerable to developing chronic pain disability. PERSPECTIVE: This paper shows that high-anxious people do not overgeneralize pain-related fear and pain expectancy learned in a threat context more to novel, safe contexts than low-anxious individuals, but that they do avoid more in those contexts. These findings suggest that high-anxious individuals may be vulnerable to developing chronic pain disability.
Topics: Humans; Chronic Pain; Avoidance Learning; Anxiety; Fear; Self Report; Phobic Disorders
PubMed: 37832901
DOI: 10.1016/j.jpain.2023.09.023 -
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of... Mar 1964The introduction of a warning signal preceding shocks greatly increased the effectiveness of avoidance responding. Periods of "warm-up" at the beginning of the session...
The introduction of a warning signal preceding shocks greatly increased the effectiveness of avoidance responding. Periods of "warm-up" at the beginning of the session were eliminated, and the number of shocks received by the subjects was greatly reduced. With response-shock interval constant, response rate increased as the interval between the response and the onset of the warning signal was shortened. The response tended to occur shortly after the onset of the warning signal regardless of the duration of these "safe" periods. A greatly elevated response rate was maintained even when the duration of the safe period was reduced to 0.3 sec. Thus, the pre-shock signal obtained nearly exclusive control of the responding and overrode the usual "temporal discrimination" of the response-shock interval.
Topics: Avoidance Learning; Electric Stimulation; Electricity; Electroshock; Rats; Reinforcement, Psychology; Research
PubMed: 14130087
DOI: 10.1901/jeab.1964.7-129 -
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of... Sep 1967The introduction of a warning signal that preceded a scheduled shock modified the temporal distribution of free-operant avoidance responses. With response-shock and...
The introduction of a warning signal that preceded a scheduled shock modified the temporal distribution of free-operant avoidance responses. With response-shock and shock-shock intervals held constant, response rates increased only slightly when the response-signal interval was reduced. The result is consistent with Sidman's (1955) findings under different conditions, but at variance with Ulrich, Holz, and Azrin's (1964) findings under similar conditions. Methylphenidate in graded doses increased response rates, modifying frequency distributions of interresponse times. Drug treatment may have disrupted a "temporal discrimination" formed within the signal-shock interval. More simply, methylphenidate influenced response rates by increasing short response latencies after signal onset; this effect was more prominent than the drug's tendency to increase the frequency of pre-signal responses. When signal-onset preceded shock by 2 sec, individual differences in performance were marked; methylphenidate suppressed responding in one rat as a function of increasing dose levels to a greater degree than in a second animal, but both subjects received more shocks than under control conditions.
Topics: Animals; Avoidance Learning; Electroshock; Male; Methylphenidate; Rats; Reaction Time
PubMed: 6050059
DOI: 10.1901/jeab.1967.10-485 -
Behaviour Research and Therapy Jun 2023Avoiding pain-associated activities can prevent tissue damage. However, when avoidance spreads excessively (or overgeneralizes) to safe activities, it may culminate into...
Avoiding pain-associated activities can prevent tissue damage. However, when avoidance spreads excessively (or overgeneralizes) to safe activities, it may culminate into chronic pain disability. Gaining insight into ways to reduce overgeneralization is therefore crucial. An important factor to consider in this is relief, as it reinforces avoidance behavior and therefore may be pivotal in making avoidance persist. The current study investigated whether experimentally induced positive affect can reduce generalization of pain-related avoidance and relief. We used a conditioning task in which participants (N = 50) learned that certain stimuli were followed by pain, while another was not. Subsequently, they learned an avoidance response that effectively omitted pain with one stimulus, but was ineffective with another. Next, one group of participants performed an exercise to induce positive affect, while another group performed a control exercise. During the critical generalization test, novel stimuli that were perceptually similar to the original stimuli were presented. Results showed that both avoidance and relief generalized to novel stimuli, thus replicating previous work. However, increasing positive affect did not reduce generalization of avoidance, nor relief.
Topics: Humans; Fear; Chronic Pain; Generalization, Psychological; Avoidance Learning; Cognition
PubMed: 37126993
DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2023.104324 -
PloS One 2015Avoidance behavior is a critical component of many psychiatric disorders, and as such, it is important to understand how avoidance behavior arises, and whether it can be...
Avoidance behavior is a critical component of many psychiatric disorders, and as such, it is important to understand how avoidance behavior arises, and whether it can be modified. In this study, we used empirical and computational methods to assess the role of informational feedback and ambiguous outcome in avoidance behavior. We adapted a computer-based probabilistic classification learning task, which includes positive, negative and no-feedback outcomes; the latter outcome is ambiguous as it might signal either a successful outcome (missed punishment) or a failure (missed reward). Prior work with this task suggested that most healthy subjects viewed the no-feedback outcome as strongly positive. Interestingly, in a later version of the classification task, when healthy subjects were allowed to opt out of (i.e. avoid) responding, some subjects ("avoiders") reliably avoided trials where there was a risk of punishment, but other subjects ("non-avoiders") never made any avoidance responses at all. One possible interpretation is that the "non-avoiders" valued the no-feedback outcome so positively on punishment-based trials that they had little incentive to avoid. Another possible interpretation is that the outcome of an avoided trial is unspecified and that lack of information is aversive, decreasing subjects' tendency to avoid. To examine these ideas, we here tested healthy young adults on versions of the task where avoidance responses either did or did not generate informational feedback about the optimal response. Results showed that provision of informational feedback decreased avoidance responses and also decreased categorization performance, without significantly affecting the percentage of subjects classified as "avoiders." To better understand these results, we used a modified Q-learning model to fit individual subject data. Simulation results suggest that subjects in the feedback condition adjusted their behavior faster following better-than-expected outcomes, compared to subjects in the no-feedback condition. Additionally, in both task conditions, "avoiders" adjusted their behavior faster following worse-than-expected outcomes, and treated the ambiguous no-feedback outcome as less rewarding, compared to non-avoiders. Together, results shed light on the important role of ambiguous and informative feedback in avoidance behavior.
Topics: Adult; Avoidance Learning; Behavior; Feedback; Female; Humans; Male; Punishment; Reward; Young Adult
PubMed: 26630279
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0144083 -
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of... Jul 1963Animals learn to avoid with the Sidman procedure even though the avoidance response is not followed by the termination of any warning stimulus in the environment. What...
Animals learn to avoid with the Sidman procedure even though the avoidance response is not followed by the termination of any warning stimulus in the environment. What reinforces this response? The accepted explanation has been that the avoidance response is reinforced when it terminates other behavior that has become aversive by pairing with shock. However, the reinforcement may also be derived from the temporal discriminations that develop with Sidman avoidance. These and other temporal discriminations show that the animal has available some events that vary with the postresponse time. The shock will closely follow the temporal stimuli at long postresponse times and would be expected to make them aversive. The stimuli at short postresponse times would have a relatively low aversiveness due to their more remote relation to shock. Since the avoidance response changes a long postresponse time to a short one, that response would be followed by a decrease in aversiveness which would reinforce it. When sharp temporal discriminations are present, reinforcement from the decrease in aversiveness of temporal stimuli probably plays a dominant role in maintaining the avoidance response. This formulation fits the available data and has adequate answers for the objections that have been raised to earlier conceptions of the role temporal discriminations might play in Sidman avoidance. Although under some conditions the reinforcement in Sidman avoidance seems to be primarily due to the decrease in aversiveness of temporal stimuli, under other conditions there probably is reinforcement from the termination of conditioned aversive responses.
Topics: Animals; Avoidance Learning; Conditioning, Classical; Electroshock; Environment; Play and Playthings; Reaction Time; Reinforcement, Psychology
PubMed: 14013166
DOI: 10.1901/jeab.1963.6-s477 -
European Journal of Pharmacology Mar 1988Oxytocin (OXT) reduced locomotion, rearing, grooming and bolus production in a circular open field at 15 min, but not at 60 min, after a subcutaneous (s.c.) injection....
Oxytocin (OXT) reduced locomotion, rearing, grooming and bolus production in a circular open field at 15 min, but not at 60 min, after a subcutaneous (s.c.) injection. The OXT fragments OXT-(1-8), OXT-(4-9), OXT-(4-8), OXT-(5-9) and OXT-(5-8) had no effect at 15 min or 60 min after s.c. injection. OXT and its fragments attenuated passive avoidance behavior following postlearning (consolidation test) or preretention (retrieval test) injection. Some of the fragments were more potent than the parent molecule. The extinction of pole-jumping avoidance behavior was inhibited by OXT-(1-9) in doses of 1 and 3 micrograms s.c. Doses lower than 1 microgram had no effect or even tended to facilitate extinction. This bimodal effect was more pronounced when OXT fragments OXT-(4-9) and OXT-(5-9) were used. S.c. injection of these peptides in low doses (0.01-0.001 microgram) caused facilitation, and in doses higher than 0.1 microgram inhibition, of pole-jumping avoidance behavior. Removal of the Gly9-NH2 moiety eliminated the bimodal effect; such peptides (OXT-(1-8), OXT-(4-8), OXT-(5-8) caused facilitation of extinction only. Since the C-terminal peptides Pro-Leu-Gly-NH2 and Leu-Gly-NH2 both seem to inhibit extinction of pole-jumping avoidance behavior, it is possible that there are two sequences in the OXT molecule, which act in opposite ways.
Topics: Amino Acid Sequence; Animals; Avoidance Learning; Behavior, Animal; Extinction, Psychological; Grooming; Male; Motor Activity; Oxytocin; Peptides; Rats; Rats, Inbred Strains
PubMed: 3366172
DOI: 10.1016/0014-2999(88)90774-1 -
Journal of Clinical Child and... 2018Recent research has indicated that vicarious learning can lead to increases in children's fear beliefs and avoidance preferences for stimuli and that these fear...
Recent research has indicated that vicarious learning can lead to increases in children's fear beliefs and avoidance preferences for stimuli and that these fear responses can subsequently be reversed using positive modeling (counterconditioning). The current study investigated children's vicariously acquired avoidance behavior, physiological responses (heart rate), and attentional bias for stimuli and whether these could also be reduced via counterconditioning. Ninety-six (49 boys, 47 girls) 7- to 11-year-olds received vicarious fear learning for novel stimuli and were then randomly assigned to a counterconditioning, extinction, or control group. Fear beliefs and avoidance preferences were measured pre- and post-learning, whereas avoidance behavior, heart rate, and attentional bias were all measured post-learning. Control group children showed increases in fear beliefs and avoidance preferences for animals seen in vicarious fear learning trials. In addition, significantly greater avoidance behavior, heart rate responding, and attentional bias were observed for these animals compared to a control animal. In contrast, vicariously acquired avoidance preferences of children in the counterconditioning group were significantly reduced post-positive modeling, and these children also did not show the heightened heart rate responding to fear-paired animals. Children in the extinction group demonstrated comparable responses to the control group; thus the extinction procedure showed no effect on any fear measures. The findings suggest that counterconditioning with positive modelling can be used as an effective early intervention to reduce the behavioral and physiological effects of vicarious fear learning in childhood.
Topics: Avoidance Learning; Child; Female; Heart Rate; Humans; Male; Models, Statistical
PubMed: 27008619
DOI: 10.1080/15374416.2016.1138410 -
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Sep 2023Threat-anticipatory defensive responses have evolved to promote survival in a dynamic world. While inherently adaptive, aberrant expression of defensive responses to... (Review)
Review
Threat-anticipatory defensive responses have evolved to promote survival in a dynamic world. While inherently adaptive, aberrant expression of defensive responses to potential threat could manifest as pathological anxiety, which is prevalent, impairing, and associated with adverse outcomes. Extensive translational neuroscience research indicates that normative defensive responses are organized by threat imminence, such that distinct response patterns are observed in each phase of threat encounter and orchestrated by partially conserved neural circuitry. Anxiety symptoms, such as excessive and pervasive worry, physiological arousal, and avoidance behavior, may reflect aberrant expression of otherwise normative defensive responses, and therefore follow the same imminence-based organization. Here, empirical evidence linking aberrant expression of specific, imminence-dependent defensive responding to distinct anxiety symptoms is reviewed, and plausible contributing neural circuitry is highlighted. Drawing from translational and clinical research, the proposed framework informs our understanding of pathological anxiety by grounding anxiety symptoms in conserved psychobiological mechanisms. Potential implications for research and treatment are discussed.
Topics: Humans; Fear; Anxiety; Anxiety Disorders; Avoidance Learning
PubMed: 37414377
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105305