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QUESTION-327: Does available avoidance leave threat expectancy uncorrected in proportion to how few unavoided disconfirming trials it allows, in people with anxiety disorders as in healthy controls, and does performing and then losing an unsignalled avoidance response raise threat expectancy for a stimulus never paired with harm, scaling with how much the person avoided?

2 min read

Properties4
StatusOpen
Tagslearning-and-conditioning, psychopathology-and-treatment
Linewill-organization
Cited as “bears on” byTHEORY-1184 — In three laboratory studies of healthy humans, offering a costless avoidance response for a stimulus never paired with the aversive outcome led people to use it, and withdrawing the response then raised their expectancy of the outcome for that stimulus; signalling of the response is a confound, THEORY-1189 — In laboratory avoidance learning in healthy humans, an avoidance response that remains available during extinction persists, in some participants for hundreds of unpunished trials, and keeps expectancy of the aversive outcome higher than in people denied it; the more effective and the cheaper the response, the slower it extinguishes, THEORY-901 — As Mancinelli and Bach's systematic review of avoidance learning in healthy humans reports it, rating both A, an avoidance response left available during extinction persists, in some participants for hundreds of unpunished trials, and keeps expectancy of the aversive outcome higher than in people denied it (nine studies); and less effective or costlier responses extinguish faster (six studies, one exception), THEORY-920 — As Mancinelli and Bach's systematic review reports it, rating it B, in three laboratory studies of healthy humans a signalled, costless avoidance response offered for a stimulus never paired with the aversive outcome was used, and withdrawing it raised expectancy of the outcome for that stimulus, though Xia et al. (2019) found no change in skin conductance or startle; every study signalled the response's availability, which may itself have read as a danger cue

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Why it is a question

THEORY-901 and THEORY-920 hold what the review reports in healthy volunteers, with signalled, instructed responses. The authors’ mechanism for protection from extinction is marked “putatively”, and every study of avoidance spreading to the safe stimulus signalled the response’s availability.

What would answer it

The former promote_when of each, unchanged.

THEORY-901. The version of record read and found to rate the same phenomena; and a study, preferably in people with an anxiety disorder as well as healthy controls, that varies how effective an available avoidance response is and measures threat expectancy trial by trial, showing that more effective avoidance both lasts longer and leaves threat expectancy less corrected, with the difference carried by the number of unavoided disconfirming trials. It is refuted if, with effectiveness varied and response cost and signalling held fixed, persistence does not depend on effectiveness, or if threat expectancy falls as fast with avoidance available as without. Further healthy-volunteer studies with signalled, instructed button responses cannot settle the clinical reading.

THEORY-920. The version of record read and found to report the same; and a study in which avoidance of a never-punished stimulus is made available without a signal that could itself indicate danger (a continuously available, unsignalled response), showing that performing it, and then losing it, raises threat expectancy for that stimulus, with the effect scaling with how much the person avoided rather than with whether the option was offered. It is refuted if, with signalling removed, offering and then withdrawing avoidance leaves threat expectancy for a safe stimulus unchanged. Studies that keep the signal cannot settle it.

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