Study on Animal Instinct Behavior- Fear.
The study conducted at the University of California entitled "Temporally Massed CS Presentations Generate More Fear Extinction Than Spaced Presentations", not only helped mice get passed their fears but also helped to better understand clinical behavioral therapy and how it helps treat anxiety disorders, phobias, panic disorder, post-traumatic-stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This experiment was conducted to get a better understanding if a controlled reaction; in this case being fear, could be unlearned by just applying the stimulus without the control over many times.
There researchers joined eight mice at a time and taught them to fear a simple noise through the use of conditioning. First they played the noise for the mice to hear. Then they sent an electrical shock though the floor of the mice cage. Afterwards, the researchers separated the mice into groups. They forced the mice to hear the noise about twenty times for two minutes without administering any shocks. The researchers found that by presenting the stimulus to the mice over and over again without providing a shock, they were able to eliminate the fear. The mice learned to not fear the noise because a painful shock would not always follow it. The mice began to lose the association of the noise with the schock.
During the experiment, the researchers associated the small noise with a shock to the mice. They also significantly separated the shocks the mice received. Some of the mice learned that not all of the noises meant that they would feel pain. For humans, someone who has been badly bitten by an animal has probably developed a fear of it. To extinguish this fear, that person should be presented with well-behaving animals. By doing so, the person will not fear them because he or she has learned that not all of them will bite.
The researchers also found that both short and long-term extinctions of fears were more effective when they were "temporally massed", or presented the stimulus.
