Contingency awareness as a prerequisite for differential contextual fear conditioning

Abstract

Contingency awareness during conditioning describes the phenomenon of becoming consciously aware of the association between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US). Despite the fact that contingency awareness is necessary for associative learning in some conditioning paradigms, its role in contextual fear conditioning, a variant that uses a context-CS (CTX) instead of a cue, has not been characterized thus far. We investigated if contingency awareness is a prerequisite for contextual fear conditioning and if subjects classified as aware differ from unaware subjects on a hemodynamic, autonomic, and behavioral level. We used a computer-generated picture context as CTX and slightly painful electric stimulation as US while we recorded brain responses by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and obtained skin conductance responses (SCR) and verbal ratings of emotional valence and arousal. SCR analyses revealed that only aware subjects became conditioned to the US-associated CTX (CTX+). Brain activity related to the CTX+ was more strongly pronounced in fearassociated areas like the insula in the aware relative to the unaware group. Finally, the hippocampus was functionally connected to the cingulate cortex and posterior medial frontal gyrus in aware subjects relative to unaware subjects. These task-related differential connectivity patterns suggest that information exchange between the hippocampus and regions involved in the expression of conditioned fear and decision uncertainty is crucial for the acquisition of contingency knowledge. This study demonstrates the importance of contingency awareness for contextual fear conditioning and points to the hippocampus as a potential mediator for contingency learning in contextual learning.

Observational learning of fear in real time procedure

“…We find the low level of contingency knowledge and its impact on conditioning measures interesting (as it highlights the role of the observer's attention and the observational stimulus quality), but not surprising, given that the role of contingency knowledge has been described for various conditioning protocols and conditioning measures, e.g. 31,42,43 . Skin conductance response has been reported as a measure reflecting contingency learning 44 , while potentiation of the acoustic startle reflex has been claimed to be more valence-specific and less dependent on attention 45 , although see 46 , but its relation to contingency awareness is still unclear.…”

Observed but Never Experienced – Vicarious Learning of Fear Under Ecological Conditions

“…The ambiguity, however, should have been reduced by the fact that the observers were familiar with the demonstrators and thus more likely to be sensitive to their We find the low level of contingency knowledge and its impact on conditioning measures interesting (as it highlights the role of the observer's attention and the observational stimulus quality), but not surprising, given that the role of contingency knowledge has been described for various conditioning protocols and conditioning measures (e.g. Baeuchl et al, 2019;Tabbert et al, 2006Tabbert et al, , 2011Weidemann et al, 2016). While skin conductance response has been reported as a measure reflecting contingency learning (Sevenster et al, 2014), a potentiation of the acoustic startle reflex has been claimed to be a specific index of fear acquisition, not requiring contingency awareness (Hamm & Vaitl, 1996;Hamm & Weike, 2005) and generally considered to be more valence-specific and less dependent on attention (Lang et al, 1990; although see Mertens & De Houwer, 2016).…”

Unconscious preparation: Effects of prime visibility on semantic generalization of task priming

“…The general consensus is that associative learning depends on contingency awareness (CA) (Baeuchl et al, 2019;Mertens & Engelhard, 2020;Weidemann et al, 2016). This is not supported by the current study: Not only did none of the participants in the Reducedvisibility groups demonstrate CA, most failed to even recall any prime.…”

“…Even for visible stimuli, the role of contingency awareness (CA; the awareness of US-CS relationship) is still being debated. The requirement of CA appears to be procedure-dependent, but in general CA is required for successful conditioning (Baeuchl, Hoppstädter, Meyer, & Flor, 2019;Mertens & Engelhard, 2020;Weidemann, Satkunarajah, & Lovibond, 2016). In a comprehensive study using word stimuli as US, Greenwald and De Houwer (2017) suggested that different processes are involved in conditioning involving visible versus subliminal stimuli: The former requires contingency awareness, but the later does not.…”