Flooding or Response Prevention or Detainment or Forced Reality-Testing: A Note on Nomenclature

Abstract

The extinction of avoidance behavior has received widespread attention, both clinical and experimental. Techniques which hasten the cessation of avoidance responding in animals during extinction have been developed, and clinical analogues have been employed. One tcchnique which has been thoroughly investigated is known as (or or or reality-testing; see Baum, 1970). In this note I discuss the various labels attached to or used to describe this technique and attempt to justify the adoption of the standardized term flooding. Flooding involves exposure to the stimuli which the organism fears. When the avoidance involves an element of active flight, then entails thwarting or blocking the avoidance response, detaining the organism in the presence of the feared stimuli for some length of time. Hence, the labels response prevention or deta i~lent For this technique. However, the technique can also be employed in the case of the extinction of passive avoidance responding as well. Thus, an animal can be trained to run down an alley-way for food and then punished for running. This animal will learn to avoid punishment passively by ceasing its alley-running behavior. When punishment has been removed and we wish the passive avoidance to extinguish, would entail forcing the animal to move down the runway in the absence of any punishment, so that its previous behavior of alley-running would be re-established. Obviously, the rerms response prevention or detainment would be misleading in this case. Flooding is thus the term which is most appropriate, since it is applicable to the extinction of both active and passive avoidance responding alike. The term forced reality-testing has also been used interchangeably with the rerm flooding. However, [he former term has clinical connotations which may be inappropriate in purely experimental work. Sidestepping these connotations, the term also conveys the notion that it must be an unusually strong emotional experience for an organism to undergo exposure to something ic fears and has been accustomed to fleeing in some way. In the clinical situation, the exposure generally occurs through the use of the patient's imagination rather than in real life. For such flooding in imagination, the often used term implosion has been suggested as the standard term (Baum & Poser, in press).