The validity of laboratory-based treatment research: Bridging the gap between fear extinction and exposure treatment

•A framework to evaluate the external validity of treatment models is proposed and applied to extinction research.•Using extinction, we illustrate how this framework can guide future research to optimize treatment models.•Improving external validity of treatment models can increase the clinical impact of experimental psychopathology research.

A major objective of experimental psychopathology research is to improve clinical practice via the experimental study of treatment mechanisms. The success of this endeavor depends on the external validity of the procedures used to model the treatment component in the laboratory. We propose a general framework and a set of specific criteria that will allow evaluating whether a certain laboratory procedure is a valid model for a certain clinical treatment. We illustrate this framework by evaluating the validity of extinction as a laboratory model for clinical exposure therapy. Although we acknowledge the merits of the extinction model, we argue that its validity might not be as firmly established as the research community assumes. We also use extinction as an example to demonstrate how considerations of the proposed criteria can stimulate further improvements to existing models of treatment. We conclude that the systematic assessment of external validity of treatment models is an important step towards bridging the gap between science and practice in the field of experimental psychopathology.