Selective maintenance of aversive memories as a mechanism of spontaneous recovery of fear

Return of fear after exposure poses a significant challenge for treatment of anxiety dis-orders. In this study, we used computational modeling to test competing mechanismsunderlying spontaneous recovery of fear over time. We fit computational models of anovel theory of spontaneous recovery—selective maintenance of aversive memories—to behavior from a fear conditioning and extinction task (N=316), and showed that theyuniquely captured spontaneous recovery and quantitatively outperformed alternativemodels embodying theories from the literature. The results were supported across mul-tiple datasets, including a preregistered replication (N=355) and a sample with mentalhealth symptoms (N=520). The selective maintenance modeling framework addition-ally offers mechanistic insights into overgeneralization and the development of anxi-ety. Indeed, in the symptomatic sample we found that symptoms of generalized anxietydisorder correlated with estimates of overgeneralization in the model. Through simu-lations, we further demonstrated that insights from our model can explain how targetedinterventions such as retrieval cues and cognitive interventions can prevent the returnof fear. These results highlight selective maintenance of aversive events in memory asa critical and testable target for improving anxiety treatments and preventing relapse.