Mechanism-based psychotherapy research seeks to identify the mechanisms of change that mediate the success of psychotherapeutic interventions, in order to use this knowledge for optimizing and individualizing these interventions.

Against this backdrop, our study investigates the processes of extinction learning generalization—a subprocess of a postulated mechanism of action presumed to underlie exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders.

Our aim is to identify stimulus- and context-related extinction generalization gradients. Furthermore, we examine the influence of individual differences on generalization processes. Therefore, we compare generalization performance between patients with anxiety disorders and healthy controls, differentiating the latter based on various personality traits (e.g., trait anxiety).

Through this study, we aim to contribute to the mechanism-based and personalized development of CBT. This research project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and is being conducted by researchers at the University of Hildesheim in cooperation with the University of Greifswald.