Avoidance is an adaptive response to actual or perceived threat. However, persistent avoidance despite low likelihood of threat can become maladaptive and prevent effective psychological treatment. To examine behavioural avoidance, in-person, lab-based threat learning paradigms are typically used with relatively small sample sizes. However, such methods pose issues when in-person testing is difficult. The aim of the current study was therefore to adapt a validated lab-based threat and avoidance conditioning paradigm into an online avoidance learning task to investigate threat expectancy and avoidance remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online fear and avoidance learning task was developed and administered to 119 participants who differed in the opportunity to avoid a safe stimulus. Fear and avoidance conditioning were successful and the opportunity to avoid a known safe stimulus increased threat expectancy and fear for the experimental group, relative to the control group. Such remote delivery paradigms may therefore be useful when evaluating changes in fear and avoidance

回避是对实际或感知威胁的适应性反应。然而，尽管威胁的可能性很小，但持续回避可能会变得适应不良并妨碍有效的心理治疗。为了检查行为回避，面对面的、基于实验室的威胁学习范式通常用于相对较小的样本量。然而，当现场测试很困难时，这种方法会带来问题。因此，当前研究的目的是将经过验证的基于实验室的威胁和回避条件范式改编为在线回避学习任务，以在 COVID-19 大流行期间远程调查威胁预期和回避。开发了一项在线恐惧和回避学习任务，并对 119 名参与者进行管理，这些参与者在避免安全刺激的机会方面存在差异。相对于对照组，恐惧和回避条件反射是成功的，避免已知安全刺激的机会增加了实验组的威胁预期和恐惧。因此，在评估恐惧和回避的变化时，这种远程传递范式可能很有用