The influence of state anxiety on the acquisition and extinction of fear

Vriends, Noortje; Michael, Tanja; Blechert, Jens; Meyer, Andrea; Margraf, Jürgen; Wilhelm, Frank H.

doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2010.09.001

Cited by 34 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…As the effect of anxiety on fear and extinction associated processes is generally rather small and hence requires large sample sizes (Haaker et al, 2015), it remains to be investigated by future larger studies whether the effect of state 15 anxiety is indeed specific to ROF. Notably, however, others did neither observe an impact of (experimentally induced) state anxiety on CS discrimination during fear acquisition and extinction in a large sample (Vriends et al, 2011). Furthermore, future studies should address the impact of individual differences in state anxiety on other types of ROF such as renewal and spontaneous recovery.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

State anxiety modulates the return of fear

Kuhn

Mertens

Lonsdorf

2016

International Journal of Psychophysiology

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Current treatments for anxiety disorders are effective but limited by the high frequency of clinical relapse. Processes underlying relapse are thought to be experimentally modeled in fear conditioning experiments with return fear (ROF) inductions. Thereby reinstatementinduced ROF might be considered a model to study mechanisms underlying adversity-induced relapse. Previous studies have reported differential ROF (i.e. specific for the danger stimulus) but also generalized ROF (i.e. for safe and danger stimuli), but reasons for these divergent findings are not clear yet. Hence, the response pattern (i.e. differential or generalized) following reinstatement may be of importance for the prediction of risk or resilience for ROF.The aim of this study was to investigate state anxiety as a potential individual difference factor contributing to differentiability or generalization of return of fear.Thirty-six participants underwent instructed fear expression, extinction and ROF induction through reinstatement while physiological (skin conductance response, fear potentiated startle) and subjective measures of fear and US expectancy were acquired. Our data show that, as expected, high state anxious individuals show deficits in SCR discrimination between dangerous and safe cues after reinstatement induced ROF (i.e. generalization) as compared to low state anxious individuals.The ability to maintain discrimination under aversive circumstances is negatively associated with pathological anxiety and predictive of resilient responding while excessive generalization is a hallmark of anxiety disorders. Therefore, we suggest that experimentally induced ROF might prove useful in predicting relapse risk in clinical settings and might have implications for possible interventions for relapse prevention.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

State anxiety modulates the return of fear

Kuhn

Mertens

Lonsdorf

2016

International Journal of Psychophysiology

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“…A drawback of such design is that anxiety levels drop to baseline during this interval. But even in the case of conditioning or extinction directly after state anxiety induction (Vriends et al, 2011), the participant might feel relief that the stressful event is terminated and forthcoming threat is over. In sum, these studies do provide insight into the influence of acute stress on fear and safety learning, but do not provide information about deficits in inhibitory fear learning in the presence of stress, when state anxiety levels are still high.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of State Anxiety on Fear Discrimination and Extinction in Females

Dibbets

Evers

2017

Front. Psychol.

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Formal theories have linked pathological anxiety to a failure in fear response inhibition. Previously, we showed that aberrant response inhibition is not restricted to anxiety patients, but can also be observed in anxiety-prone adults. However, less is known about the influence of currently experienced levels of anxiety on inhibitory learning. The topic is highly important as state anxiety has a debilitating effect on cognition, emotion, and physiology and is linked to several anxiety disorders. In the present study, healthy female volunteers performed a fear conditioning task, after being informed that they will have to perform the Trier Social Stress Test task (n = 25; experimental group) or a control task (n = 25; control group) upon completion of the conditioning task. The results showed that higher levels of state anxiety corresponded with a reduced discrimination between a stimulus (CS+) typically followed by an aversive event and a stimulus (CS-) that is never followed by an aversive event both during the acquisition and the extinction phase. No effect of state anxiety on the skin conductance response associated with CS+ and CS- was found. Additionally, higher levels of state anxiety coincided with more negative valence ratings of the CSs. The results suggest that increased stress-induced state anxiety might lead to stimulus generalization during fear acquisition, thereby impairing associative learning.

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“…Such a design is not optimal because differences between groups, such as elevated state-anxiety due to repeated exposure to fear eliciting stimuli (pictures of snakes and spiders), are not controlled for. Such uncontrolled differences in state-anxiety between groups may lead to alterations in conditioning that do not reflect prepared learning (e.g., Vriends et al, 2011). Recent studies on prepared learning therefore usually make use of a within-subject design (Ho & Lipp, 2014;Olsson, Ebert, Banaji, & Phelps, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can prepared fear conditioning result from verbal instructions?

Mertens

Raes

Houwer

2016

Learning and Motivation

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Evolutionary fear-relevant stimuli such as snakes or spiders are thought to be prepared to elicit fear reactions. This implies that the acquisition of conditioned fear responses is facilitated when these stimuli serve as conditioned stimuli (CSs). Moreover, extinction of conditioned fear responses is delayed when CSs are prepared stimuli. The research presented in this article addresses the question whether such selective learning effects can be obtained even when participants do not experience pairings of CSs and US but receive only instructions about those pairings. Two experiments were conducted in which participants were verbally informed about the relationship between fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant CSs and the presence of an electrical stimulus (US). However, CSs were never actually paired with the US. US expectancy ratings and skin conductance responses were recorded during multiple CS only trials. In the first experiment, we observed acquisition, extinction and reinstatement of fear on the basis of instructions, but these effects were not modulated by the fear-relevance of the CSs. In the second experiment, we manipulated whether participants actually experienced the CS-US contingencies or were merely instructed. We obtained facilitated acquisition for the merely instructed fear-relevant CS+. We discuss these results in relation to the evolutionary fear learning model of Öhman and Mineka (2001) and the expectancy bias model of Davey (1992).

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The influence of state anxiety on the acquisition and extinction of fear

Cited by 34 publications

References 40 publications

State anxiety modulates the return of fear

State anxiety modulates the return of fear

The Influence of State Anxiety on Fear Discrimination and Extinction in Females

Can prepared fear conditioning result from verbal instructions?

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