Out with the old and in with the new: The role of intolerance of uncertainty in reversal of threat and safety

Morriss, Jayne; Saldarini, Francesco; Chapman, Catherine; Pollard, Miriam; Reekum, Carien M. van

doi:10.1177/2043808719834451

Cited by 24 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…For this purpose, we also provided participants with contingency reversal instructions after the acquisition phase. As observed in previous studies (e.g., Atlas et al, 2016;Morriss, Saldarini, Chapman, Pollard, & van Reekum, 2019;Wilson, 1968), we expected that these contingency instructions would reverse conditioned psychophysiological responses.…”

Section: Contingency Instructionsmentioning

confidence: 66%

Human fear conditioning depends on stimulus contingency instructions

Mertens¹,

Boddez²,

Krypotos³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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CONTINGENCY INSTRUCTIONS 2 Highlights • This study showed that contingency instructions influence human fear conditioning • This was found with contingency awareness rates and psychophysiological measures • Contingency reversal instructions rapidly reverse psychophysiological responses • Contingency instructions should be reported in human fear conditioning studies CONTINGENCY INSTRUCTIONS 3 AbstractHuman fear conditioning is often seen as the result of a highly automatic process that is independent of higher cognitive functions and verbal instructions. However, cumulative research findings call this view into question. In the current preregistered study (N = 102), we investigated whether the number of participants who successfully show conditioned fear acquisition depends on the instructions given to them before the fear conditioning phase.Particularly, one third of the participants were instructed about the precise contingency between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US). Another third was merely instructed that there would be a contingency. The last third did not get any instructions about the CS-US contingency. We found facilitated fear acquisition rate in the first and second group compared to the third group. Furthermore, contingency reversal instructions following the acquisition phase reversed both conditioned skin conductance and startle responses. These results highlight that researchers should systematically report the instructions given to participants in human fear conditioning studies.

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Section: Contingency Instructionsmentioning

confidence: 66%

Human fear conditioning depends on stimulus contingency instructions

Mertens¹,

Boddez²,

Krypotos³

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To target trait anxiety-related processes, we suggest the subliminal induction of a threat to trigger a generalized fear state typically associated with high trait anxiety (e.g., Van Den Hout et al, 1995;Li et al, 2007;Reuman et al, 2015). This can either be achieved by a threat of shock paradigm (Clark et al, 2012;Morriss et al, 2019) or by emotional priming (Yang et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Acrophobic Fear and Trait Anxiety on Human Behavior in a Virtual Elevated Plus-Maze

Madeira

Gromer

Latoschik

et al. 2021

Front. Virtual Real.

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The Elevated Plus-Maze (EPM) is a well-established apparatus to measure anxiety in rodents, i.e., animals exhibiting an increased relative time spent in the closed vs. the open arms are considered anxious. To examine whether such anxiety-modulated behaviors are conserved in humans, we re-translated this paradigm to a human setting using virtual reality in a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) system. In two studies, we examined whether the EPM exploration behavior of humans is modulated by their trait anxiety and also assessed the individuals’ levels of acrophobia (fear of height), claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces), sensation seeking, and the reported anxiety when on the maze. First, we constructed an exact virtual copy of the animal EPM adjusted to human proportions. In analogy to animal EPM studies, participants (N = 30) freely explored the EPM for 5 min. In the second study (N = 61), we redesigned the EPM to make it more human-adapted and to differentiate influences of trait anxiety and acrophobia by introducing various floor textures and lower walls of closed arms to the height of standard handrails. In the first experiment, hierarchical regression analyses of exploration behavior revealed the expected association between open arm avoidance and Trait Anxiety, an even stronger association with acrophobic fear. In the second study, results revealed that acrophobia was associated with avoidance of open arms with mesh-floor texture, whereas for trait anxiety, claustrophobia, and sensation seeking, no effect was detected. Also, subjects’ fear rating was moderated by all psychometrics but trait anxiety. In sum, both studies consistently indicate that humans show no general open arm avoidance analogous to rodents and that human EPM behavior is modulated strongest by acrophobic fear, whereas trait anxiety plays a subordinate role. Thus, we conclude that the criteria for cross-species validity are met insufficiently in this case. Despite the exploratory nature, our studies provide in-depth insights into human exploration behavior on the virtual EPM.

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“…118,152,155 ). A substantial number of studies have reported no association between trait anxiety and fear acquisition measured by self-report ratings 135,[156][157][158][159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172] and psychophysiological measures [159][160][161][162][163][164][165]167,170,[173][174][175][176][177][178] . Other studies found that trait anxiety modulates fear acquisition.…”

Section: Fear Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding clinical fear and anxiety through the lens of human fear conditioning

et al. 2023

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Fear is an adaptive emotion that mobilizes defensive resources upon confrontation with danger. However, fear becomes maladaptive and can give rise to the development of clinical anxiety when it exceeds the degree of threat, generalizes broadly across stimuli and contexts, persists after the danger is gone or promotes excessive avoidance behaviour. Pavlovian fear conditioning has been the prime research instrument that has led to substantial progress in understanding the multi-faceted psychological and neurobiological mechanisms of fear in past decades. In this Perspective, we suggest that fruitful use of Pavlovian fear conditioning as a laboratory model of clinical anxiety requires moving beyond the study of fear acquisition to associated fear conditioning phenomena: fear extinction, generalization of conditioned fear and fearful avoidance. Understanding individual differences in each of these phenomena, not only in isolation but also in how they interact, will further strengthen the external validity of the fear conditioning model as a tool with which to study maladaptive fear as it manifests in clinical anxiety.

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Out with the old and in with the new: The role of intolerance of uncertainty in reversal of threat and safety

Cited by 24 publications

References 41 publications

Human fear conditioning depends on stimulus contingency instructions

Human fear conditioning depends on stimulus contingency instructions

Effects of Acrophobic Fear and Trait Anxiety on Human Behavior in a Virtual Elevated Plus-Maze

Understanding clinical fear and anxiety through the lens of human fear conditioning

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