Acquisition and maintenance of disgust reactions in an OCD analogue sample: efficiency of extinction strategies through a counter conditioning procedure

Abstract Background If obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has long been considered as an anxiety disorder, disgust is the dominant emotion in contamination-based OCD. However, disgust seems resistant to exposure with response prevention partly due to the fact that disgust is acquired through evaluative conditioning. The present research investigates a counter-conditioning intervention in treating disgust-related emotional responses in two groups of individuals with high (HDCC, n = 25) and low (LDCC, n = 23) contamination concerns. Methods The two groups completed a differential associative learning task in which neutral images were followed by disgusting images (conditioned stimulus; CS+), or not (CS-). Following this acquisition phase, there was a counterconditioning procedure in which CS + was followed by a very pleasant US, while CS- remained unreinforced. Results Following counterconditioning, both groups reported significant reduction in their expectancy of US occurrence and reported less disgust with CS+. For both expectancy and valence, reduction was lower in the HDCC group than in the LDCC group. Disgust sensitivity was highly correlated with both acquisition and maintenance of the response acquired, while US expectation was predicted by anxiety. Conclusion Desensitization to disgust handled by counter-conditioning procedure reduces both expectations and conditioned valence.