Department of Health Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Health Psychology, University of Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Place du Cardinal Mercier 10, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS), Belgium.
Biol Psychol. 2020 Mar;151:107850. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2020.107850. Epub 2020 Jan 22.
Sighs have important physiological and psychological regulatory functions. These rewarding effects of a sigh potentially reinforce sighing in situations that require physiological and/or psychological regulation. The present study aimed to investigate whether sighs can become learned behaviors via operant learning. In two studies, we manipulated the effect of spontaneous sighs in response to dyspnea relief, by either punishing a sigh by the onset of dyspnea, or not punishing a sigh by continued dyspnea relief. Results show that sigh rates in response to cues predicting the punishment of sighs are 1.20-1.28 times lower than sigh rates in response to cues predicting no punishment of sighs. These findings suggest that sighs can become learned behaviors via operant learning, contributing to both maladaptive sighing, potentially leading to respiratory dysregulation and respiratory complaints, and to adaptive sighing. Furthermore, these findings suggest new clinical practices to increase and decrease sigh rates during breathing training.
叹气具有重要的生理和心理调节功能。叹气的这种奖赏效应可能会在需要生理和/或心理调节的情况下加强叹气。本研究旨在探讨叹气是否可以通过操作性学习成为习得行为。在两项研究中，我们通过在缓解呼吸困难时对叹气进行惩罚（即通过再次出现呼吸困难来惩罚叹气）或不通过继续缓解呼吸困难来惩罚叹气，来操纵对缓解呼吸困难的自然叹气的影响。结果表明，对预示着叹气将受到惩罚的线索做出的叹气反应率比预示着不会对叹气进行惩罚的线索做出的叹气反应率低 1.20-1.28 倍。这些发现表明，叹气可以通过操作性学习成为习得行为，这既有助于适应性叹气，也可能导致呼吸失调和呼吸抱怨，又有助于适应性叹气。此外，这些发现为在呼吸训练期间增加和减少叹气率提供了新的临床实践。
