| Exposure-based treatments have proven effective in treating a range of fears and phobias and can be accounted for by mechanisms described in behavioral theory. Enhanced dosed and dosed-only exposure are promising new behavioral approaches for treating fears and phobias. Fifty participants with speech anxiety were randomly assigned to a prolonged exposure condition (PE), a dosed-only exposure condition (DE), a positively enhanced dosed exposure condition (PDE), a negatively-supplemented dosed exposure condition (NDE), or a mindfulness enhanced dosed exposure condition (MDE). End of session results for all of the enhanced groups resulted in significantly lower subjective ratings of discomfort than the non-enhanced groups. In addition, results indicated that the MDE condition tended to produce less measured aversive arousal and lower subjective ratings of discomfort relative to the tested alternatives. These techniques may represent an important advancement, in that the treatment gains of traditional exposure therapies might be achieved without the degree of aversive arousal (and possibly high drop out rates) typically seen in exposure therapies. |
