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8 DISCUSSION 191 not predict the US. An example is carrying safety aids, such as a mobile phone, in panic disorder. Although a mobile phone does not prevent fainting, patients may consider it less likely that dizziness will have catastrophic effects if they are carrying a mobile phone. A negative occasion setter hampers inhibitory learning, because it decreases the discrepancy between the expected and feared outcome. In chapter 2, safety behavior that minimized threat severity may have functioned as a negative occasion setter for participants who did not show extinction learning (van Uijen, Dalmaijer, et al., 2017). These participants may have learned that the CS was not followed by the US in the presence of the cue that indicated safety behavior availability. Figure 2. A negative occasion setter inhibits the CS – US association (Treanor & Barry, 2017). The circle with OS indicates an occasion setter. Third, the finding that safety behavior that minimized the severity of threat, but did not preclude its occurrence prevented extinction in chapter 2 (van Uijen, Dalmaijer, et al., 2017) may also be explained by contextual renewal. Inhibitory learning is context-specific (Bouton, 2004), which means that the inhibitory association is (only) active in the context (e.g., external surrounding or the individual’s internal physical state) in which it was learned, see Figure 3. Safety behavior may function as a contextual feature (Treanor & Barry, 2017; Vervliet & Indekeu, 2015), for instance, by evoking relief. When inhibitory learning occurs in the presence of safety behaviors, removal of safety behavior availability may represent a context shift, and cause contextual renewal. An example is the use of anxiolytic medication during exposure therapy. This may create an internal context in which inhibitory learning occurs. If a patient stops using medication after exposure therapy, OS US CS