Our Goal

The goal of the Human Threat Extinction Work Group is to generate a basic fear conditioning protocol optimally designed for studies examining extinction enhancement strategies (e.g., counterconditioning, gradual extinction, etc.). Allowing researchers to more easily compare the results of different extinction enhancement strategies across labs, with the hope that this promotes collaboration between fear extinction researchers and translation and collaboration with exposure therapy researchers.

There are several advantages to full or partial adoption of a basic fear conditioning protocol:

Allows researchers to more easily compare results of different studies of extinction enhancement strategies across labs. Extinction enhancement strategies could include paradigms some of our labs have been investigating (e.g., counterconditioning, gradual extinction, novelty-facilitated extinction, multiple extinction contexts, etc.,) or could also be testing ground for new protocols that labs are developing.

Promotes collaboration between fear extinction researchers and hopefully lead to multi-site studies which will improve the power to detect smaller effects

Data from these studies could be combined to look at individual difference factors that may relate to extinction or extinction enhancement strategy effectiveness. These data can also be more easily shared with other ongoing fear conditioning data sharing initiatives.

Facilitates future translation of effective extinction enhancement strategies to pre-clinical and clinical research.