Modern Learning Theory Analysis

In the article, A Modern Learning Theory Perspective on the Etiology of Panic Disorder, by Bouton et al. (2001), the authors discuss conditioning and how it correlates with the development of panic disorder. Bouton, Mineka, and Barlow focus mainly on the role of early classical conditioning episodes on the understanding of the etiology of the disorder. In the article, they emphasized on the three psychological theories of panic disorder and the modern learning theory for the development of panic disorder and how they all relate to conditioning for panic disorder. The three psychological theories discussed in the article are the cognitive theory, anxiety sensitivity theory, and conditioning theory. The cognitive theory explains how individuals
have “catastrophic misinterpretations” of some bodily sensations. This is vital to the etiology of panic disorder because when an individual focuses on those internal sensations, they will experience panic because they may be misinterpreting the feelings and forming catastrophic thoughts (such as; “I am going to have a heart attack”). Studies have shown that when those cognitive factors are reduced, panic is decreased in response. Anxiety sensitivity theory proposes that some individuals with panic disorder carry a “belief trait” that anxiety and its symptoms cause horrible physical, psychological, or social consequences. People with panic disorder are aware of the consequences and do not misinterpret them, yet they fear them, which causes anxiety and panic. Lastly, conditioning theory is a very popular one in the world of understanding the etiology of anxiety disorders. It offers the idea that when stimuli and situations or events (conditioned stimuli) are paired with a panic attack (conditioned response), the individual may learn to be triggered with panic and anxiety when they come across the specific conditioned stimulus. In other words, lower level somatic anxiety sensations become conditioned stimuli that are correlated with higher levels of anxiety (aka a panic attack). The modern learning theory explains that even though anxiety and panic are two separate sensations, they both interact together to create a conditioned response of an attack.
Anxiety is defined in the article as a neurotic anticipation of a future danger. This “future danger” is often thought of as a panic attack, which was defined as an extreme sensation of fear and death with severe flight or fight behavioral tendencies. In a study by Basoglu et al. (1992), mentioned in the article, patients with panic disorder and agoraphobia recorded anxiety and panic levels in a diary, along with the events that were happening at that time. The results showed that 80% of panic attacks were expected, and 20% were spontaneous. Also, 69% showed that they panicked as a result of a previous duration of anxiety, while just 13% had no preceding anxiety. This explained the idea that the increased intensity of panic and its symptoms are correlated with an increase in pre-panic anxiety. Therefore, anxiety increases the likelihood of panic. This phenomenon relates back to conditioning in terms of the anxiety is a conditioned stimuli and panic is the conditioned response. Yet the initial anxiety could also be cued by exteroceptive cues as well, interoceptive conditioning is often resistant to extinction, which makes it even more likely that it is a cause of panic
disorder.