[Implementation of a Multi-Professional, 'Operating System' Across Different Diseases for the Psychiatry: The Perspective of the User]. / Der Einsatz eines störungsübergreifenden, multiprofessionellen 'Betriebssystems' für die Psychiatrie: die Perspektive der Nutzer.

OBJECTIVE: Assessment of the practicability and acceptance of a guide, which was created based on the Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT) regarding interactions, attitudes and basically overarching therapeutic interventions (GiMa-Therapy-Basics, GMTB) METHODS: Written survey of clinic staff (n = 83) from different professions as experts based on training and experienced in using the guide. RESULTS: Experts reported a high user acceptance. The applicability in psychiatry was estimated as high across psychiatric disorders. CONCLUSION: Guides based on mindfulness such as the GMTB constitute a promising basis to improve the work with seriously ill patients in psychiatry.

Adding or removing context components equally disrupts extinction in human predictive learning.

In two human predictive learning experiments, we investigated the impact of adding or removing context components on extinction performance toward a cue. In each experiment, participants initially received repeated pairings of a cue and an outcome in a context composed of two distinctive components (context AB). Initial training was followed by a series of trials in which the cue was no longer followed by the outcome. This extinction treatment was conducted in the presence of a different pair of distinctive context components (context CD). During a final test, we observed that changing the extinction context CD disrupted extinction performance toward the cue regardless of whether the context was changed by adding or removing context components. We discuss implications of our results for theories of associative learning.

Attention toward contexts modulates context-specificity of behavior in human predictive learning: Evidence from the n-back task.

According to the attentional theory of context processing (ATCP), learning becomes context specific when acquired under conditions that promote attention toward contextual stimuli regardless of whether attention deployment is guided by learning experience or by other factors unrelated to learning. In one experiment with humans, we investigated whether performance in a predictive learning task can be brought under contextual control by means of a secondary task that was unrelated to predictive learning, but supposed to modulate participants' attention toward contexts. Initially, participants acquired cue-outcome relationships presented in contexts that were each composed of two elements from two dimensions. Acquisition training in the predictive learning task was combined with a one-back task that required participants to match across consecutive trials context elements belonging to one of the two dimensions. During a subsequent test, we observed that acquisition behavior in the predictive learning task was disrupted by changing the acquisition context along the dimension that was relevant for the one-back task, while there was no evidence for context specificity of predictive learning when the acquisition context was changed along the dimension that was irrelevant for the one-back task. Our results support the generality of the principles advocated by ATCP.

Fear acquisition and liking of out-group and in-group members: Learning bias or attention?

The present study explores the notion of an out-group fear learning bias that is characterized by facilitated fear acquisition toward harm-doing out-group members. Participants were conditioned with two in-group and two out-group faces as conditioned stimuli. During acquisition, one in-group and one out-group face was paired with an aversive shock whereas the other in-group and out-group face was presented without shock. Psychophysiological measures of fear conditioning (skin conductance and pupil size) and explicit and implicit liking exhibited increased differential responding to out-group faces compared to in-group faces. However, the results did not clearly indicate that harm-doing out-group members were more readily associated with fear than harm-doing in-group members. In contrast, the out-group face not paired with shock decreased conditioned fear and disliking at least to the same extent that the shock-associated out-group face increased these measures. Based on these results, we suggest an account of the out-group fear learning bias that relates to an attentional bias to process in-group information.

Context specificity of both acquisition and extinction of a Pavlovian conditioned response.

It is widely held that the extinction of a conditioned response is more context specific than its initial acquisition. One proposed explanation is that context serves to disambiguate the meaning of a stimulus. Using a procedure that equated the learning histories of the contexts, we show that the memory of an appetitive Pavlovian association can be highly context specific despite being unambiguous. This result is inconsistent with predictions of the Rescorla-Wagner model of learning but in line with configural accounts of contextual control of behavior. We propose an explanatory model in which context serves to modulate the gain of associative strength and which expands upon the configural idea of unitary representations of context and conditioned stimuli.

The impact of context relevance during extinction learning.

In two predictive-learning experiments, we investigated the role of the informational value of contexts for the formation of context-specific extinction learning. The contexts were each composed of two elements from two dimensions, A and B. In Phase 1 of each experiment, participants received acquisition training with a target cue Z in context A1B1 (the numbers assign particular values on the context dimensions). In Phase 2, participants were trained with conditional discriminations between two other cues, X and Y, for which only one of the two context dimensions was relevant. In a third phase, participants received extinction trials with cue Z in context A2B2. During a final test phase, we observed that a partial change of the extinction context disrupted extinction performance when the extinction context was changed on the dimension that had been trained as being relevant for the conditional discrimination. However, when the extinction context was changed on the irrelevant context dimension, extinction performance was not affected. Our results are consistent with the idea that relevant contexts receive more attention than do irrelevant contexts, leading to stronger context-specific processing of information learned in the former than in the latter type of contexts.

Some Factors Modulating the Strength of Resurgence After Extinction of an Instrumental Behavior.

In resurgence, an operant behavior that has undergone extinction can return ("resurge") when a second operant that has replaced it itself undergoes extinction. The phenomenon may provide insight into relapse that may occur after incentive or contingency management therapies in humans. Three experiments with rats examined the impact of several variables on the strength of the resurgence effect. In each, pressing one lever (L1) was first reinforced and then extinguished while pressing a second, alternative, lever (L2) was now reinforced. When L2 responding was then itself extinguished, L1 responses resurged. Experiment 1 found that resurgence was especially strong after an extensive amount of L1 training (12 as opposed to 4 training sessions) and after L1 was reinforced on a random ratio schedule as opposed to a variable interval schedule that was matched on reinforcement rate. Experiment 2 found that after 12 initial sessions of L1 training, 4, 12, or 36 sessions of Phase 2 each allowed substantial (and apparently equivalent) resurgence. Experiment 3 found no effect of changing the identity of the reinforcer (from grain pellet to sucrose pellet or sucrose to grain) on the amount of resurgence. The results suggest that resurgence can be robust; in the natural world, an operant behavior with an extensive reinforcement history may still resurge after extensive incentive-based therapy. The results are discussed in terms of current explanations of the resurgence effect.

The informational value of contexts affects context-dependent learning.

In two predictive-learning experiments, we investigated the role of the informational value of contexts for the formation of context-dependent behavior. During Phase 1 of each experiment, participants received either a conditional discrimination in which contexts were relevant (Group Relevant) or a simple discrimination in which contexts were irrelevant (Group Irrelevant). Each experiment also included an ABA renewal procedure. Participants received Z+ in context A during Phase 1, extinction of Z in context B during Phase 2, and were tested with Z in context A during a test phase. In each experiment, extinction of Z proceeded faster and was followed by stronger response recovery in Group Relevant than in Group Irrelevant. In Experiment 2, which included recording of eye-gaze behavior, dwell times on contexts were longer in Group Relevant than in Group Irrelevant. Our results support the idea that relevant contexts receive more attention, leading to stronger context specificity of learning.