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Tackling Costly Fearful Avoidance Using Pavlovian Counterconditioning by Anneloes M. Hulsman; Iris van de Pavert; Karin Roelofs; Floris Klumpers is a Psychology article available to read on EtoBox.

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Avoidance behavior constitutes a major transdiagnostic symptom that exacerbates anxiety. It hampers fear extinction and predicts poor therapy-outcome. Pavlovian counterconditioning with a reward could alleviate avoidance better than traditional extinction by reducing negative valence of the feared situation. However, previous studies are scarce and did not consider that pathological avoidance is often costly and typically evolves from an approach-avoidance conflict. Therefore, we used an approach-avoidance conflict paradigm to model effects of counterconditioning on costly avoidance (i.e., avoidance that leads to missing out on rewards). Results from our preregistered Bayesian Mixed Model analyses in fifty-one healthy participants (43 females) indicated that counterconditioning was more effective in reducing negative valuation and decreasing costly avoidance than traditional extinction. This study supports application of a simple counterconditioning technique, shows that its efficacy transfers to more complex avoidance situations, and suggests treatment may benefit from increasing reward drive in combination with extinction to overcome avoidance. Application in a clinical sample is

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Author

Anneloes M. Hulsman; Iris van de Pavert; Karin Roelofs; Floris Klumpers

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Published

2024

Language

EN

Field

Psychology (Social Sciences)