Abstract
We aimed to examine differences in fear conditioning between anxious and nonanxious participants in a single large sample. We employed a remote fear conditioning task (FLARe) to collect data from participants from the Twins Early Development Study (n = 1,146; 41% anxious vs. 59% nonanxious). Differences between groups were estimated for their expectancy of an aversive outcome towards a reinforced conditional stimulus (CS+) and an unreinforced conditional stimulus (CS-) during acquisition and extinction phases. During acquisition, the anxious group (vs. nonanxious group) showed greater expectancy towards the CS-. During extinction, the anxious group (vs. nonanxious group) showed greater expectancy to both CSs. These comparisons yielded effect size estimates (d = 0.26-0.34) similar to those identified in previous meta-analyses. The current study demonstrates that remote fear conditioning can be used to detect differences between groups of anxious and nonanxious individuals, which appear to be consistent with previous meta-analyses including in-person studies.
Highlights
Fear conditioning models aversive associative learning, a key process involved in the development, maintenance, and treatment of anxiety disorders (Craske et al, 2018; Mineka & Oehlberg, 2008; Pittig et al, 2018)
Anxious participants tend to show either greater responding to the conditional stimuli” (CS)+ and CS− (Blechert et al, 2007; Norrholm et al, 2011; Orr et al, 2000), or to the CS− only (Lissek et al, 2009, 2010; Rabinak et al, 2017). This inconsistency is reflected in two meta‐analyses, as one found stronger responses to both the CS+ and CS− (Lissek et al, 2005) while the other, more recent analysis found stronger responses to the CS− only (Duits et al, 2015). These findings suggest poor inhibitory responding to safety (CS−) among anxious participants and potentially increased excitatory responding to threat (CS+)
Females were three times as likely as males to be in the anxious group
Summary
Fear conditioning models aversive associative learning, a key process involved in the development, maintenance, and treatment of anxiety disorders (Craske et al, 2018; Mineka & Oehlberg, 2008; Pittig et al, 2018). One CS is reinforced (CS+) by repeatedly presenting it with the aversive US, while another nonreinforced CS is presented alone (CS−). The CS+ typically elicits a conditional response (e.g., sweating) reflecting anticipation of US onset, whereas the CS− does not. The CS+ and CS− are repeatedly presented without the US. Extinction usually results in a decrease in conditional responses driven by the development of a competing association between the CS+ and safety (Bouton, 1993). Acquisition and extinction model the development and exposure‐ based treatment of anxiety, respectively
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