Projects
Attention to detail: improving extinction by enhancing generalization. KU Leuven
Models of exposure therapy, the gold standard cognitive-behavioural treatment (CBT) for anxiety disorders, suggest that attention may play an important role in the learning that takes place during treatment, and that this may influence the success of treatment. Treatment requires that people generalize what they learn, to other situations that involve stimuli or situations which previously evoked anxiety. This thesis examines the role of ...
Experimental extinction as a laboratory model of exposure: mechanisms of generalization and the role of extinction cues. KU Leuven
Generalization in psychopathology: The role of abstract repetitive thought and mediating pathways. KU Leuven
Many psychological problems are characterized by a gradual broadening of the complaints over stimuli, contexts, and behaviors. This expansion of the complaints over stimuli, contexts, and behaviors is known as generalization. Notwithstanding the fact that generalization leads to the onset and maintenance of psychopathology, it remains unclear what cognitive factors underlie the process of generalization. This doctoral thesis focuses on the ...
An alternative route to widespread fears: the effects of fear learning on perceptual discrimination KU Leuven
Our fears do not remain specific but tend to spread across stimuli and situations, making fear generalization a key transdiagnostic mechanism underlying multiple disorders. Our recent finding that generalized fears were associated with failures in perceptual discrimination between novel, unthreatening stimuli and threat-associated stimuli has drastically challenged existing conceptions. Combined with research showing the malleability of ...
Implications of glucocorticoids in disrupting traumatic fear memories KU Leuven
Reactivating previously established memories can create opportunities to change their later expression. For example, briefly re-exposing subjects to a conditioned stimulus, followed by any of a range of manipulations such as drug administration or additional learning, has been shown to attenuate later conditioned responding to that stimulus, referred to as ‘cue-dependent’ or ‘reactivation-dependent’ amnesia. One prominent hypothesis is that ...
Perceptual discrimination impairment in chronic pain: the role of fear learning. KU Leuven
A growing body of evidence has identified pain-related fear as key process in the development of chronic pain, a common and disabling disorder that remains challenging to treat. Yet, how such fear amplifies pain or affects perception remains unclear. Recently, we suggested that fear learning towards bodily sensations impairs the ability to discriminate between bodily sensations. Preliminary clinical findings report of a relationship between ...
Using Mental Imagery to Rescript Emotional Memories in a Fear Conditioning Paradigm KU Leuven
In classical fear conditioning, a neutral stimulus (for example, a red car) becomes associated with a fearful event (for example, being in a car crash). Because of this association, the original fear response becomes associated with the neutral stimulus. A reduction of this fear response can be achieved by extinction learning: repeated exposure to the neutral stimulus in the absence of the fearful event. A new memory trace is created where ...
From Pavlov to visceroception? The role of interoceptive fear conditioning in the development of gastrointestinal symptom-specific anxiety, and its impact on visceroption. KU Leuven
As a cardinal symptom of most functional gastrointestinal disorders, visceral pain and discomfort are very common and disabling. Unfortunately, such symptoms remain poorly understood and are hard to treat. There is a general consensus that fear towards gastrointestinal sensations may play an important role, but the mechanisms underlying such fear as well as its impact on visceral symptom perception are unclear. The project aims to elucidate ...
Size matters! Effect sizes for single-case experiments evaluating exposure in vivo for pain-related fear. KU Leuven
A single-case experiment (SCE) can be used to evaluate the effect of an intervention for a single person. Because a growing amount of research in the behavioural sciences uses SCEs, it is important to develop methods to accurately analyse and report them. One of these methods is the randomisation test, which is based on the random assignment of measurement occasions to treatments. Taken together, the randomisation test and the random ...