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Translational research on fear and extinction learning suggests that successful exposure therapy consists of the development of new memories of safety that override previously acquired fear memories. Based on such research, inhibitory learning theory and other frameworks for understanding mechanisms of exposure (e.g. emotional processing theory), have proposed a variety of possible explanations for what drives symptom improvement. These include expectancy violations, increases in fear tolerance, improvements in coping self-efficacy, within- and between-session fear reduction, and changes in threat-related cognitions.