IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0105955.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Extinction and Renewal of Conditioned Sexual Responses

Author

Listed:
  • Mirte Brom
  • Ellen Laan
  • Walter Everaerd
  • Philip Spinhoven
  • Stephanie Both

Abstract

Introduction: Extinction involves an inhibitory form of new learning that is highly dependent on the context for expression. This is supported by phenomena such as renewal and spontaneous recovery, which may help explain the persistence of appetitive behavior, and related problems such as addictions. Research on these phenomena in the sexual domain is lacking, where it may help to explain the persistence of learned sexual responses. Method: Men (n = 40) and women (n = 62) participated in a differential conditioning paradigm, with genital vibrotactile stimulation as US and neutral pictures as conditional stimuli (CSs). Dependent variables were genital and subjective sexual arousal, affect, US expectancy, and approach and avoid tendencies towards the CSs. Extinction and renewal of conditioned sexual responses were studied by context manipulation (AAA vs. ABA condition). Results: No renewal effect of genital conditioned responding could be detected, but an obvious recovery of US expectancy following a context change after extinction (ABA) was demonstrated. Additionally, women demonstrated recovery of subjective affect and subjective sexual arousal. Participants in the ABA demonstrated more approach biases towards stimuli. Conclusions: The findings support the context dependency of extinction and renewal of conditioned sexual responses in humans. This knowledge may have implications for the treatment of disturbances in sexual appetitive responses such as hypo- and hypersexuality.

Suggested Citation

  • Mirte Brom & Ellen Laan & Walter Everaerd & Philip Spinhoven & Stephanie Both, 2014. "Extinction and Renewal of Conditioned Sexual Responses," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-13, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0105955
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105955
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0105955
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0105955&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0105955?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0105955. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.