Stress-induced recovery of fears and phobias.

Abstract

Accounts of human fears and phobias based on current conditioning models using data from adults are examined and found wanting. Instead, the characteristics of human phobias resemble the kind of learning found during the amnesic period of infancy. As certain neural systems mature, conditioning begins to exhibit adult characteristics: context dependency, sharp generalization, and rapid extinction. Although direct behavioral control by the early learning systems wanes, the adult learning system seems to be structured at least/partially through the lasting influence of infantile experience. Under (hormonal) stress, residues of early experience are reinstated and incorporated into adult memory where they directly control behavior. This control exhibits infantile characteristics. The evidence suggests that once acquired, such conditional fears might never be eliminated using traditional extinction or counterconditioning procedures. The view leads to a renewed emphasis upon the role of experience in human development, accepting the disproportionate importance of infant experience as the foundation upon which subsequent learning and cognitive function rest.It is plain from clinical experience that certain patients experience critical incidents in which the fear has an onset. What is particularly interesting is the fact that quite frequently these same people have been exposed to the same stimulus repeatedly in the past without acquiring the fear. It seems that for acute onset fears, there are certain psychological states in which the person is vulnerable to the acquisition of fears. To take a clinical example, in those agoraphobic patients who report an acute onset of fear, one needs to know why the fear arose on the day that it did, at the time that it did. And why do they acquire a fear of public transport, crowded or open spaces, or whatever the content of their phobia, when on hundreds or thousands The first author acknowledges the fundamental contributions of David Furrow, Scon Mendelson, Michael Buttrick.

Decisions and the evolution of memory: Multiple systems, multiple functions.

“…What if functionally specialized, content-specific memory systems exist in the human mind as well? (as indeed they do; see Jacobs & Nadel, 1985;Ohman, Dimberg, & Ost, 1985, Pittman & Orr, 1995Sherry & Schacter, 1987;Silverman & Eals, 1992). These cannot be discovered if one's experimental repertoire is limited to stimuli chosen because they are functionally arbitrary, or if one's pretheoretical commitments mandate that all a system's capabilities are co-equal.…”

Infant memory for place information

“…The inability of adults to remember events from their infancy and early childhood, for example, has been attributed to a lack of contextual content in those memories. Thus adults, who frequently organize and retrieve memories on the basis of where an event occurred, are unable to retrieve memories that lack this episodic organization (e.g., Jacobs & Nadel, 1985;Mandler, 1984;Nelson, 1984).…”

“…This finding has been obtained repeatedly in studies using both human (for review, see Nadel & Zola-Morgan, 1984;Schacter & Moscovitch, 1984;Squire, 1987) and animal (for review, see O'Keefe & Nadel, 1978) adults. Given the importance of the hippocampus for normal processing of place information in adults, and given that the hippocampus in the human infant is not functional until 8 or 9 months of age and presumably continues to undergo maturational changes during the first 3 years of life (see Jacobs & Nadel, 1985;Nadel & Zola-Morgan, 1984;Schaeter & Moscovitch, 1984), the present data indicate that either the hippocampus matures earlier than previously thought or that an alternative structure is responsible for the encoding and maintenance of place information earlier in development. In this regard, the present data suggest an important distinction between information about place and information about the spatial relations between places (e.g., a cognitive map).…”

“…Their conclusion effectively negated all accounts of infantile amnesia based on contextual change after relatively long intervals, such as those envisionedby Campbell and Spear (1972). Finally, studies of nonhuman primates (Bachvalier & Mishkin, 1984), rats (Nadel & Zola-Morgan, 1984), and amnesic patients (Schacter & Moscovitch, 1984) led neuropsychologists to conclude that the delayed maturation of the hippocampal formation precludes the encoding and storage of place information early in development (Jacobs & Nadel, 1985;Nadel, Willner, & Kurz, 1985;Nadel & Zola-Morgan, 1984;Schacter & Moscovitch, 1984). In human infants, the hippocampus is presumably not functional until the 8th or 9th postnatal month.…”

Which Diagnostic Approach Is More Valid? The DSM or the Rational-Choice Theory of Neurosis

“…To date, such proof has not been supplied for by any of the neurotic or psychotic disorders. For example, in an attempt to preserve the behavioral explanation of panic disorder and agoraphobia, and in light of the fact that noxious events (i.e., unconditioned stimulus) do not usually precede the development of these disorders (e.g., Jacobs & Nadel, 1985;Mathews, Gelder, & Johnson, 1981), behaviorists suggested neo-conditioning theory termed "interceptive conditioning" (e.g., Bouton, Mineka, & Barlow, 2001;Mineka & Oehlberg, 2008;Wolpe & Rowan, 1988). According to this theory, the first panic attack, characterized by intense bodily sensations caused by a real or false threat, constitutes the conditioning event (e.g., Bouton, Mineka, & Barlow, 2001;Mineka & Oehlberg, 2008;Wolpe & Rowan, 1988).…”