Pre-COVID-19 fear conditioning responses predict COVID-19-related anxiety: evidence from an exploratory study

Hunt, C; Webler, Ryan; Emich, Abigail; Fhong, Kimberly; Hiljus, Jenna; Lissek, Shmuel

doi:10.1080/10615806.2022.2033735

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…These scores were also predicted by prepandemic values indicating that although negative affect increased in general, the ranks of individual participants on these measures remained rather stable during the years. These results complement previous studies and demonstrate a significant negative influence of the pandemic on mental health (Beutel et al, 2021; Hunt et al, 2022; Kwong et al, 2021; Robinson et al, 2022). It is less clear, however, how stable these findings are in the long run.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Such tendency was also found to be maladaptive in the current sample and predicted increased negative affect after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic specifically in those participants who had higher baseline values. Although other studies on smaller samples partly yielded divergent results (e.g., Hunt et al, 2022), the current study demonstrated that certain laboratory measures of threat responsiveness seem to be suitable to predict changes in mental strain following adverse experiences.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 58%

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Prediction of Changes in Negative Affect During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Experimental Fear Conditioning and Generalization Measures

Imholze,

Hutterer,

Gall

et al. 2023

Zeitschrift für Psychologie

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Adverse experiences interact with individual vulnerability in the etiology of mental disorders, but due to the paucity of longitudinal studies, their precise interplay remains unclear. Here, we investigated how individual differences in threat responsiveness modulated adjustments in negative affect during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants ( N = 441) underwent a fear conditioning and generalization experiment between 2013 and 2020 and were reassessed regarding anxiety and depression symptoms after the pandemic outbreak. Participants showed increased levels of negative affect following pandemic onset, which were partly modulated by laboratory measures of threat responsiveness. Decreased differentiation of threat and safety signals in participants with higher prepandemic depression and anxiety scores in the laboratory assessment were most predictive of increased symptom levels after the onset of the pandemic. However, effects were small and should be replicated in independent samples to further characterize how individual differences in threat processing interact with adverse experiences in the development of psychopathology.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 58%

Prediction of Changes in Negative Affect During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Experimental Fear Conditioning and Generalization Measures

Imholze,

Hutterer,

Gall

et al. 2023

Zeitschrift für Psychologie

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“…In police and firefighter trainees, there was a positive relationship between heart rate in response to the threat cue and psychophysiological reactivity to trauma-related imagery (but not PTSD symptoms) 1 year after a traumatic event, whereas corrugator electromyography and skin conductance responses had no predictive value 78 . Finally, a study in an undergraduate sample found a relationship between selfreported anxiety for the threat cue and COVID-19-related anxiety early in the COVID-19 pandemic, but no predictive value of anxiety for the safety cue, nor of shock expectancies for either threat or safety cues 79 .…”

Section: Prospective Validitymentioning

confidence: 93%

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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“…Another limitation which needs to be considered is that, while causality is established in the relationship between associative learning (including film exposure) and analogue symptoms, this cannot be said for the relationship between COVID-19 distress and associative learning. That is, whether individuals showed enhanced fear learning in response to COVID-19-related distress or whether a disposition towards heightened associative learning caused higher COVID-19-related distress (see Funkhouser et al, 2022 ; Hunt et al, 2022 ), cannot be established based on our mediation analyses. Further research is needed to support our hypothesized model, for instance, by examining interindividual differences in associative learning and responses to psychosocial stressors in a cross-lagged panel design.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

COVID-19-related distress is associated with analogue PTSD symptoms after exposure to an analogue stressor

Friesen

Michael

Schäfer

et al. 2022

European Journal of Psychotraumatology

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Background: The COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020 was associated with an immediate increase in mental health problems in a significant percentage of the general population. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic – as a psychosocial stressor – affected the aetiological processes of mental disorders. Previous research has shown that stress potentiates associative (fear) learning and analogue symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and that analogue PTSD symptoms can emerge in response to associative learning. Objective: We investigated whether distress in response to the COVID-19 outbreak support the development of intrusions and rumination after exposure to a non-COVID-19-related analogue trauma. Moreover, we examined if these effects are mediated by the strength of associative learning during analogue trauma. Method: 122 undergraduate university students participated in an online experiment between March and July 2020. They completed questionnaires measuring distress and rumination related to the COVID-19 outbreak. On a subsequent day, they went through an associative learning task, in which neutral stimuli were paired with the appearance of a highly aversive film clip. Subjective ratings were assessed as indicators of associative learning. On the next day, participants documented film-related intrusions and rumination. Results: COVID-19-related distress but not rumination was associated with post-film intrusion and rumination load. These effects were mediated by associative learning. Conclusions: The current findings are in line with the assumptions that stress enhanced both associative learning and PTSD symptoms. Specifically, they indicate that prolonged psychosocial stress – like during the COVID-19 outbreak – is linked to individual differences in memory processing of aversive events. Further confirmatory research is needed to replicate these results.

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Pre-COVID-19 fear conditioning responses predict COVID-19-related anxiety: evidence from an exploratory study

Cited by 3 publications

References 29 publications

Prediction of Changes in Negative Affect During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Experimental Fear Conditioning and Generalization Measures

Prediction of Changes in Negative Affect During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Experimental Fear Conditioning and Generalization Measures

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

COVID-19-related distress is associated with analogue PTSD symptoms after exposure to an analogue stressor

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