On many occasions, there are many of us who state that they have felt anguish in a certain situation, others, on the contrary, feel fear, which can occur towards an object or a situation.
Everything changes when that anguish and that fear become pathological, turning into a phobia. But what are phobias? And how are they acquired ?; We will tell you this from the Eysenck incubation theory.
The phobias are understood contemporaneously as a intense and disproportionate fear of a stimulus or situation apparent. It is an inexplicable and irrational fear that implies an avoidance of what is feared.
This theory is based on the fact that Conditioned Anxiety Responses do not remit when the subject faces conditioned stimuli, either in a real or imagined way..
If the subject is exposed to the feared stimulus, it would be expected that the conditioned response would decrease in intensity until it disappeared. For this there must be a requirement: that the Unconditioned stimulus and only the Conditioned Stimulus.
What's going on? That this is not the case in all subjects, the conditioned response does not disappear and may even increase. Eysenck reviews the extinction principle. It is very rare for the Conditioned Response to outperform the Unconditioned Response and this is observed in different phobias.
The Eysenck theory (1987), postulates that emotional responses cannot be considered a Pavlovian conditioning type A -a neutral stimulus is associated with a conditioned response (conditioned response) by pairing with an unconditioned stimulus-, but they are better understood through a type B conditioning (The Conditioned Stimulus is closely related to the Unconditioned Stimulus that elicits an unconditioned response (Unconditioned Response), and intensifies the original conditioned Stimulus.).
Anxiety is generated, maintained and increased thanks to the properties of Pavlovian type B conditioning, due to this, the simple presentation of the Conditioned Stimulus can produce an increase or appearance of the Conditioned Response.
Of course, it is necessary that both parameters interact, the intensity of the Conditioned Response and the presentation time of the Conditioned Stimulus..
It should also be explained that for this anxiety model and with what was explained above as a basis, for there to be a resistance to extinction or even an increase (incubation) of the Conditioned Response, it must act as a reinforcing agent (of the connection Conditioned Stimulus-Conditioned Response).
The same author explains that from the prism of this model, "This type of reinforcement only occurs if the Conditioned Response is strong enough, and if the duration of the Conditioned Stimulus is short ... since the strength of the Conditioned Response declines with time and with the prolonged presentation of the Conditioned Stimulus" (Sandín, 2008: 101).
This model contemplates the existence of a critical point which establishes the critical intensity of the conditioned response and the critical duration of the exposure time of the conditioned stimulus, which is nothing other than the understanding that when the Conditioned Stimulus is presented in a prolonged period of time, the Conditioned Response can become extinct, while a presence in short and repeated periods of time of the Conditioned Stimulus can produce a Increased Conditioned Response.
In other words, given the existence of a determined Conditioned Response of a strong character, the Conditioned Stimulus is presented for a long period of time, this model foresees a decrease in anxiety levels, and may even reach extinction levels of the Conditioned Response to the corresponding Conditioned Stimulus (Sandín, 1995).
Eysenck admits that:
• Symptoms of anxiety are a product of classical conditioning.
• That frequently and under certain conditions, that learned conditioned Response is incubated and increases when the subject faces conditioned Stimuli that are not remembered.
Incubation of anxiety: Conditioned Response tends to perpetuate or increase rather than decrease.
1. That the simple presentation of the conditioned Stimulus without the unconditioned Stimulus for extinction to occur is erroneous.
2. To explain the increased response we go to the genesis of phobic reactions: classical type A conditioning is not valid to explain the acquisition of phobias. It must be explained from the paradigm of type B conditioning (= interoceptive conditioning):
* Type A conditioning
Conditioned Stimulus (bell) Operative Response to Conditioned Stimulus.
Unconditioned stimulus (containerized food) Approach, salivation, chewing, swallowing.
* Type B conditioning
Conditioned stimulus (exporter contact, prepare injection)
Operant Response. Unconditioned stimulus (morphine)
Unconditioned response: nausea, vomiting, salivation, deep sleep.
The unconditioned stimulus causes important physiological changes in the organism (unconditioned response) that are also identifiable in the conditioned response.
Formulation: the theory proposes in the fear-anxiety responses 2 components defined by the 3rd variable are involved so that:
CTM = (1) Ed + (2) (Ea x Sa)
1. Expectations of harm. Most phobias start from these Expectations of harm. People anticipate that physical or social danger may ensue or the loss of a loved one. These Expectations of harm are learned through Classical Conditioning, Observational Learning or Cognitive Learning, or by 3. there are some stimuli that by themselves provoke Expectations of harm: for example, riding an airplane. It refers to stimuli: it is situational.
2. Expectations of anxiety. For example, the moment they give me the floor I will break a sweat, etc. You are afraid of harm (negative social situation) and of the anxiety that you will experience. This is important in some anxiety pictures: we have to expose him to what he fears and we have to distinguish between them. In general, the moment a person is afraid of something and recognizes it, they have anxiety expectations because the latter are learned by classical conditioning.
Under what conditions is the Conditioned Response (type B) extinguished or incubated? It depends on 2 parameters:
1. Strength or intensity of the Conditioned Response.
2. Exposure time to the conditioned stimulus.
When the Conditioned Response is very strong and the exposure time is short, there will be incubation (because the anxiety response has not been given time to descend, it would be a new conditioning trial), but if the time is long, it will occur extinction (the anxiety response decreases because there is no organism that supports that great activation for so long).
If the Conditioned Response is weak and the exposure time is short, extinction occurs (because the Conditioned Response has not reached an intense level that takes a long time to achieve).
It is necessary to pay attention not so much to the amount of anxiety that the subject has when it begins to be exposed, but to the amount of anxiety that the subject has at the end of the exposure.
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