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QUESTION-331: In a second, preferably pre-registered sample with a cost attached to avoiding, do anxiety-disorder patients again avoid a safety cue more than controls but danger cues no more, keep a higher threat expectancy after effective avoidance, and report more relief at omissions, with rated aversiveness matched or controlled?

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Properties4
StatusOpen
Tagspsychopathology-and-treatment, learning-and-conditioning
Linewill-organization
Cited as “bears on” byTHEORY-912 — In a picture-based avoidance task, treatment-seeking patients with OCD or PTSD avoided a safety cue more than healthy controls and, after effective avoidance, still expected the aversive picture more; patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia or PTSD reported more relief when it was omitted; the groups did not differ in avoiding the danger cues

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Why it is a question

THEORY-912 holds De Kleine et al.’s single cross-sectional study, in which avoiding cost nothing and patients rated the pictures as more aversive. A replication with matched aversiveness and a cost would say whether the differences belong to learning or to appraisal.

What would answer it

THEORY-912’s former promote_when, unchanged:

A second sample, ideally pre-registered and with a cost attached to avoiding, comparing anxiety-disorder patients with healthy controls on the same kind of avoidance task, and finding again that patients avoid a safety cue more, avoid danger cues no more, keep a higher expectancy of the aversive outcome after effective avoidance, and report more relief at omissions, with rated aversiveness controlled or matched. It is weakened if the differences disappear when aversiveness is matched, for example by raising aversiveness in healthy participants as the authors propose. The authors’ mechanism (excess relief reinforcing avoidance without action-safety learning) is not carried by this THEORY, and a result about it neither promotes nor refutes this one.

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