A pilot study of escape, avoidance, and approach behaviors in treated alcohol-dependent males

Sheynin, Jony; Myers, Catherine E.; Ghafar, Farahnaz; Morris, Alejandro N; Morley, Kirsten C.; Haber, Paul; Moustafa, Ahmed A.

doi:10.1080/13803395.2019.1595530

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…A study employing the same task in alcohol-dependent and healthy men (Sheynin et al, 2019) led to similar and different results. Alcohol-dependent men escaped the bomb situation more often than healthy men.…”

Section: Maladaptive Avoidance and Impaired Emotional Regulationmentioning

confidence: 88%

Impaired learning from errors and punishments and maladaptive avoidance – general mechanisms underlying self-regulation disorders?

Wypych¹,

Potenza²

2020

Preprint

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Self-regulation (SR) relates to quality of life in multiple domains. Previous studies have found important correlates of low SR including impulsivity and poor emotional regulation; however, underpinnings of low SR are incompletely understood.Individuals low in SR frequently engage in maladaptive behaviors (substance abuse, procrastination, etc.) despite negative consequences. This suggests that impaired learning from errors and punishments may be important mechanisms underlying low SR. Consistently, previous studies observed impaired error processing and learning from errors and punishments in SR-related disorders. We speculate on transdiagnostic factors underlying poor SR. Impaired error processing (possibly related to striatal functioning) may prevent subjects with low SR from learning from errors and punishments and thus learning better SR . Additionally, impaired coping in emotionally challenging situations, possibly related to prefrontal-cortical functioning, may lead to maladaptive avoidance. Moreover, maladaptive behaviors may be reinforced by temporary decreases in negative affect and rewarding values of behaviors.Given existing knowledge gaps, we call for more extensive research and describe possible directions and challenges for future studies.

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Section: Maladaptive Avoidance and Impaired Emotional Regulationmentioning

confidence: 88%

Impaired learning from errors and punishments and maladaptive avoidance – general mechanisms underlying self-regulation disorders?

Wypych¹,

Potenza²

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Furthermore, in a spaceship task (see Section "Internalized symptoms, externalized symptoms, and early life stress for more details of the task), Sheynin et al (2019) showed that alcohol-dependent patients showed a stronger tendency for behavioral approach compared to healthy controls, as indicated by exposing their spaceship to gain more task-related points (i.e., spent less time in hiding their spaceships). Despite that Sheynin et al (2019) did not directly examine sensation seeking, alcohol dependence is typically associated with high levels of trait sensation seeking (Roberti et al, 2004). Thus, the heightened behavioral approach observed in alcohol-dependent patients may be related to high levels of sensation seeking.…”

Section: Sensation Seekingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A systematic review of the inter-individual differences in avoidance learning

Wong¹,

Aslanidou²,

Malbec³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Avoidance is typically adaptive given it prevents threat. However, avoidance becomes pathological when it is executed out of proportion of threat (i.e., excessive or insufficient avoidance), persists in the absence of threat, or excessively generalize to other innocuous situations. Although there has been an increase in research in these different processes of pathological avoidance, the role of inter-individual differences in these avoidance processes receives less research attention, despite of its theoretical and clinical importance. In this systematic review, we summarized the role of inter-individual traits that related to risk or resilient factors for anxiety-related disorders, trauma-and stressor-related disorders, obsessive-compulsive related disorders, pain related disorders, eating-related disorders, and affective disorders. A majority of the inter-individual differences had an apparent mixed or null effect on the different processes of avoidance. We discussed this lack of evidence of inter-individual differences on avoidance due to a lack of methodological and/or analytical consensus in the field, in addition to a lack of integration of recent findings into existing theories. Recommendations for future research are discussed, with a focus on examining the conditions or experimental parameters for certain inter-individual traits to manifest their effects on avoidance, identifying the nuances of inter-individual differences in avoidance, and a call for integrating recent preliminary findings into existing theories.

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Acquisition and extinction of human avoidance behavior: attenuating effects of omission contingencies of appetitive, aversive and warning cues

Allen,

Sheynin,

Myers

2024

Discov Psychol

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Recently, there has been a renewed interest in avoidance behavior, and its applicability to clinical conditions such as anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and addiction. In a computer-based avoidance task for humans, participants control an on-screen spaceship, shoot at enemy targets (appetitive cue) to gain points, and learn to respond to an on-screen warning signal (WS) by entering safe “hiding” areas to escape/avoid an aversive event (point loss and on-screen explosion) paired with an on-screen aversive cue (bomb). Prior research on active avoidance in rodents suggests that avoidance learning is facilitated if the response also terminates the WS. Here, we adapted the computer-based task to investigate this idea in healthy humans. Two hundred and twenty-two young adults completed one of three conditions of the task: a non-contingent condition, where hiding caused omission/avoidance of the aversive event but did not terminate the WS; a fully-contingent condition, where hiding also caused omission/termination of all on-screen appetitive and aversive cues as well as terminating the WS; and a partially-contingent condition where hiding caused omission of the appetitive and aversive cues, but did not affect the WS. Both contingency manipulations decreased escape/avoidance behavior, as compared to the non-contingent condition where the WS and other cues are not affected by the avoidance behavior. This study has implications for the basic understanding of the mechanisms that affect avoidance behavior in humans.

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A pilot study of escape, avoidance, and approach behaviors in treated alcohol-dependent males

Cited by 5 publications

References 60 publications

Impaired learning from errors and punishments and maladaptive avoidance – general mechanisms underlying self-regulation disorders?

Impaired learning from errors and punishments and maladaptive avoidance – general mechanisms underlying self-regulation disorders?

A systematic review of the inter-individual differences in avoidance learning

Acquisition and extinction of human avoidance behavior: attenuating effects of omission contingencies of appetitive, aversive and warning cues

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