Department of Psychological Science, Kent State University, l, Kent, OH, United States.
Department of Psychological Science, Kent State University, l, Kent, OH, United States.
Behav Res Ther. 2024 Mar;174:104479. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2024.104479. Epub 2024 Jan 17.
Disgust can be acquired via evaluative conditioning; a process by which a neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus; CS) comes to be evaluated as disgusting due to its pairing with an inherently disgusting stimulus (unconditioned stimulus; US). Research has shown that conditioned disgust responses are resistant to extinction which may have implications for disorders (i.e., contamination-based obsessive-compulsive disorder, specific phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder) in which heightened disgust has been implicated. Importantly, extinction is the primary mechanism by which exposure therapies are thought to achieve symptom reduction for these disorders. Exposure therapies were originally modeled on fear extinction, whereas disgust extinction was largely overlooked until recently. Accordingly, differences in the degree to which learned disgust and fear can be attenuated via extinction learning remains unclear. The present investigation was a meta-analysis directly comparing the degree of extinction of conditioned disgust (n = 14) and conditioned fear (n = 14) in laboratory paradigms. Extinction was operationalized as the standardized mean difference (SMD) in evaluative ratings between the CS+ (the CS paired with the US) and CS- (the unpaired CS) after extinction training. Results of a subgroup analysis indicated that disgust (SMD = 0.52) was significantly more resistant to extinction than fear (SMD = 0.37). Additionally, a series of meta-regression analyses indicated that extinction was not influenced by important study characteristics (e.g., sex, age, number of conditioning and extinction trials). The findings suggest that extinction-based approaches may be less effective at attenuating learned disgust and research is needed to better optimize treatments for disgust-related disorders.
厌恶可以通过评价性条件作用获得；这是一个过程，其中一个中性刺激（条件刺激；CS）由于与其配对的固有令人厌恶的刺激（非条件刺激；US）而被评价为令人厌恶。研究表明，条件性厌恶反应不易消退，这可能对某些障碍（即基于污染的强迫症、特定恐惧症和创伤后应激障碍）产生影响，这些障碍中已经涉及到厌恶情绪的增强。重要的是，消退是暴露疗法被认为可以减轻这些障碍症状的主要机制。暴露疗法最初是基于恐惧消退模型设计的，而厌恶消退在最近才得到广泛关注。因此，通过消退学习可以减轻习得的厌恶和恐惧的程度的差异尚不清楚。本研究是一项直接比较实验室范式中条件性厌恶（n=14）和条件性恐惧（n=14）消退程度的元分析。消退是通过在消退训练后 CS+（与 US 配对的 CS）和 CS-（未配对的 CS）之间的评价评分的标准化均数差（SMD）来操作化的。亚组分析的结果表明，厌恶（SMD=0.52）比恐惧（SMD=0.37）更不易消退。此外，一系列元回归分析表明，消退不受重要研究特征（例如，性别、年龄、条件和消退试验的数量）的影响。研究结果表明，基于消退的方法可能在减轻习得的厌恶方面效果较差，需要进一步研究以更好地优化针对厌恶相关障碍的治疗方法。
