Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Health Psychology Research Group, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Behav Res Ther. 2020 Mar;126:103556. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2020.103556. Epub 2020 Jan 22.
Since the seminal 'Little Albert' study by Watson and Rayner (1920), fear conditioning has become one of the most commonly used paradigms for studying the etiology of anxiety-related disorders. In a fear conditioning procedure, a (neutral) conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), resulting in fear-related conditioned responses (CRs) to the CS. Whereas fear conditioning research initially focused on observable elements in the environment (i.e., CSs, USs, and their contingency) and their effects (i.e., CRs), subsequent research indicated that attention should also be given to unobservable mental events (e.g., intrusive memories of aversive outcomes) to more fully account for the symptomatology of anxiety disorders. In this paper, we review the research relating to four major research questions on the relationship between mental imagery and fear conditioning: (1) Can mental imagery substitute for actual stimulus administration? (2) Can mental imagery inflate CRs? (3) Can fear conditioning result in the installment of mental images as CRs (i.e., intrusions)? (4) Can mental imagery-based interventions reduce CRs? For all these research questions, tentative confirmatory evidence has been found and these findings corroborate contemporary conditioning theories. Nonetheless, we point to several open questions and methodological issues that require further research.
自 Watson 和 Rayner（1920 年）的开创性“小艾伯特”研究以来，恐惧条件反射已成为研究焦虑相关障碍病因的最常用范式之一。在恐惧条件反射程序中，（中性）条件刺激（CS）与厌恶的非条件刺激（US）配对，导致对 CS 的与恐惧相关的条件反应（CR）。虽然恐惧条件反射研究最初侧重于环境中的可观察元素（即 CS、US 及其关联）及其影响（即 CR），但随后的研究表明，还应关注不可观察的心理事件（例如，对厌恶结果的侵入性记忆），以更充分地解释焦虑障碍的症状。在本文中，我们回顾了与心理意象和恐惧条件反射之间关系的四个主要研究问题相关的研究：（1）心理意象可以替代实际的刺激管理吗？（2）心理意象会夸大 CR 吗？（3）恐惧条件反射是否会导致将心理意象作为 CR（即侵入）安装？（4）基于心理意象的干预是否可以减少 CR？对于所有这些研究问题，已经找到了初步的确认性证据，这些发现与当代条件反射理论相符。尽管如此，我们指出了几个需要进一步研究的开放性问题和方法问题。
