A randomized clinical trial enrolled 240 combat veterans diagnosed with PTSD. Participants were assigned to one of three conditions: prolonged exposure therapy, cognitive processing therapy, or a waitlist control. After 12 weeks, both active treatments produced large reductions in PTSD symptom severity compared with the waitlist, with no statistically significant difference between the two active arms.
Prolonged exposure therapy reduces PTSD symptoms primarily by leveraging which learning principle?
- A
Insight into unconscious conflict
- Bcheck_circle
Extinction of conditioned fear responses
- C
Modeling of adaptive behavior
- D
Operant punishment of avoidance
Explanation
Prolonged exposure relies on classical-conditioning extinction: repeatedly confronting trauma cues without aversive consequences weakens the conditioned fear response. Punishment, psychodynamic insight, and modeling are not the active mechanism in exposure-based protocols.