Individual differences in extinction mechanisms and their effect on rehabilitation for addiction.

Associative learning is essential for the survival of an organism as it allows for prediction, control and constant adaptation to the environment. Despite these vital functions, maladaptive associative learning can also cause harmful behaviours, such as addiction. Understanding the underlying mechanisms that govern associative learning is essential as they could offer a reliable way of predicting and influencing behaviour. Alcohol addiction, one of the most common types of addiction, can be understood through simple learning principles. In the case of drinking addiction, alcohol related cues play a very important role. These cues have the capacity to generate automated drinking, stop patients from using coping skills, and negatively influence the patient's attention capacity. To control for these effects, cue exposure therapy can be used. However, acknowledging that there are significant individual differences in how people respond to various stimuli is the first step towards improving the effectiveness of such tools which could aid behaviour change. Currently, cue exposure therapy is a standardized treatment tool and it does not take into consideration individual differences. The recent work of Glautier and Brudan (unpublished) has shown that individual differences play an important role in how people extinguish a learnt response. These results were observed using simple associative learning procedures, and we argue that individual differences are also present at higher levels and should therefore influence the outcome of rehabilitation treatment for addictions. Therefore, more research is needed on how rehabilitation treatments can be tailored based on individual differences in order to maximize their outcome.