Vansteenwegen Debora, Vervliet Bram, Iberico Carlos, Baeyens Frank, Van den Bergh Omer, Hermans Dirk
Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Behav Res Ther. 2007 Jun;45(6):1169-79. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2006.08.023. Epub 2006 Oct 13.
In a treatment-analogue experiment, extinction of fear of spiders was investigated in a group of spider-anxious students. Two groups were created: in the single extinction group the extinction trials consisted of repeated presentations of a videotaped spider in one specific location of a house, whereas in the multiple extinction group the trials consisted of videotapes of the same spider in three different locations of a house. Also a control group was included that was exposed to videotapes of the location but without the spider. As reflected in skin conductance responses and self-report data, fear of spiders was significantly reduced in the two extinction groups compared to the control group. Moreover, when the extinction groups were confronted with the videotape of the spider in a new location, the single extinction group did not show generalisation of extinction, whereas the multiple extinction group did. These results corroborate the existing evidence for context dependence of extinction of fear and provide new evidence that the use of multiple contexts during extinction might improve the generalisability of extinction in humans. Implications for exposure therapy are discussed.
在一项模拟治疗实验中，对一组蜘蛛恐惧症学生的蜘蛛恐惧消退情况进行了研究。创建了两组：在单次消退组中，消退试验包括在一所房子的一个特定位置重复播放一只蜘蛛的录像带，而在多次消退组中，试验包括在一所房子的三个不同位置播放同一只蜘蛛的录像带。还纳入了一个对照组，该组观看房子位置的录像带，但没有蜘蛛。正如皮肤电反应和自我报告数据所反映的那样，与对照组相比，两个消退组对蜘蛛的恐惧显著降低。此外，当消退组在一个新位置面对蜘蛛录像带时，单次消退组没有表现出消退的泛化，而多次消退组表现出了。这些结果证实了恐惧消退的情境依赖性的现有证据，并提供了新的证据，即在消退过程中使用多个情境可能会提高人类消退的泛化性。讨论了对暴露疗法的影响。
