Context effects on habituation to disgust-relevant stimuli
Abstract
Although exposure-based treatments appear to be efficacious for the treatment of anxiety-related disorders, many individuals experience a renewal of the original fear response at follow-up. In an effort to prevent fear renewal, researchers have begun to use exposure of the conditioned stimulus in different contexts during extinction. Although studies continue to accumulate, showing that conducting exposure in multiple contexts buffers against the renewal of distress responses to fear-relevant stimuli, it remains unclear how conducting exposure in multiple contexts affects the renewal of distress responses to disgust-relevant stimuli. In the present study, participants (N = 52) were randomized to repeated presentations of disgust stimuli (vomiting in a toilet) in a single context or multiple contexts. Results revealed that those in the single context condition reported less distress after the exposure manipulation compared with the multiple context condition. Although there were no significant group differences in distress toward a novel disgust stimulus, the single context condition reported greater distress renewal than the multiple context condition. Furthermore, individuals in the multiple context condition showed significant reductions in distress at 1-week follow-up whereas distress in the single context condition remained stable. Subsequent analyses also provided moderate evidence for an effect of the disgust context manipulation on physiological arousal and disgust pro…
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Using multiple contexts reduces distress toward disgust stimuli.
“The use of multiple contexts has also been found to reduce distress toward disgust stimuli, which may have implications for disorders in which disgust plays a crucial role, such as contamination-based OCD (Viar-Paxton & Olatunji, 2012).”
From Enhancing Inhibitory Learning: The Utility of Variability in Exposure (2019) · cites this paper as Viar-Paxton & Olatunji, 2012
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- Authors
- Viar-Paxton, M. A., & Olatunji, B. O.
- Affiliations
- Vanderbilt University (US)
- ORCID
- Olatunji, Bunmi O.
- Venue
- Behavior Modification
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2012-05-22
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 705-722
- ISSN
- 0145-4455 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-4167
- OpenAlex
- W2169380738
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 43
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 3 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 3.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Behavior Modification (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH018921)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Keywords
- disgust, context effects, habituation, fear extinction, fear renewal, exposure therapy, physiological arousal, disgust propensity, avoidance behavior, anxiety disorders
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Avoidance Learning, Emotions, Extinction, Psychological, Female, Habituation, Psychophysiologic, Humans, Male, Young Adult
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