Extinction in fear conditioning: Effects on startle modulation and evaluative self-reports

Abstract

A basic feature of human evaluative conditioning is that the reported acquired valence of a previously neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) that has been paired with a valenced unconditioned stimulus (US), is resistant to extinction. The present study investigated whether startle modulation, sometimes presented as an index of acquired valence, reflected this basic feature. In a differential fear conditioning paradigm (n = 38) with an electrocutaneous stimulus as the US, a strong extinction manipulation was conducted by removing the US-electrodes and by extended extinction trials. At the end of extinction, the results corroborated previous findings of evaluative conditioning in that the reported valence for CS+ was still more negative than for CS-, despite disappearance of the differential skin conductance responses. However, startle modulation did not show resistance-to-extinction. Results were discussed in terms of recent conceptualizations of extinction.

Reappraisal facilitates extinction in healthy and socially anxious individuals

“…In fact, in none of the three studies did the CS_Neg (equivalent of CSþ in other differential conditioning designs) reach levels of the CS_Neu (~CS-) by the end of the extinction phase, even in the more extended extinction procedures in Studies 2 and 3. This is consistent with previous research on the persistence of EC (e.g., Vansteenwegen et al, 1998;Vansteenwegen et al, 2006) and makes it an important target for extinction research.…”

“…EC has a number of characteristics that make it different from expectancy learning. EC is more resistant to extinction than expectancy learning (Blechert, Michael, Williams, Purkis, & Wilhelm, 2008;Hermans, Vansteenwegen, Crombez, Baeyens, & Eelen, 2002;Vansteenwegen, Crombez, Baeyens, & Eelen, 1998;Vansteenwegen, Francken, Vervliet, De Clercq, & Eelen, 2006). EC is also associated with reinstatement (Dirikx, Hermans, Vansteenwegen, Baeyens, & Eelen, 2004;Hermans et al, 2005;Zbozinek, Hermans, Prenoveau, Liao, & Craske, 2014), a laboratory analogue of the return of fear after an initially successful treatment (Rachman, 1989) which makes EC particularly relevant for the long term outcome of exposure therapies.…”

Reinstatement of contextual anxiety in humans: Effects of state anxiety

“…On the contrary, the reinstatement effect in the behavioral measure (FPS) was not persistent but was extinguished quickly, because the analysis of both re-extinction phases on Day 3 showed no significant difference between CXT+ and CXT-anymore. This is in line with a study which showed extinction in SCR and startle responses but absent extinction in valence ratings (Vansteenwegen et al, 1998). Maybe, a stronger and more persistent reinstatement effect in FPS could have been observed, if the state anxiety before the reinstatement procedure became even higher.…”

Genetic variation in brain‐derived neurotrophic factor and human fear conditioning

“…Consistent with this body of work, the human startle reflex is enhanced in the context of aversive stimuli and situations: startle magnitude is larger in the presence of conditioned stimuli (Grillon & Davis 1997) and in response to threat of shock (Grillon et al 1991); moreover, startle magnitude tracks the association between conditioned and unconditioned stimuli across acquisition and extinction periods of fear conditioning (Vansteenwegen et al 1998;Walker et al 2002).…”