Abstract

Individuals, who score high in self-reported intolerance of uncertainty (IU), tend to find uncertainty anxiety-provoking. IU has been reliably associated with disrupted threat extinction. However, it is unclear whether IU would be related to disrupted extinction to other arousing stimuli that are not threatening (i.e., rewarding). We addressed this question by conducting a Pavlovian reward conditioning task with acquisition and extinction training phases (n=58). In the Pavlovian reward conditioning task, we recorded liking ratings, skin conductance response (SCR), and corrugator supercilii activity (i.e., brow muscle indicative or negative and positive affect) to learned reward (CS+) and neutral (CS-) cues. Typical patterns of reward acquisition and extinction training were observed for liking ratings. There was evidence for conditioning in SCR during the extinction training phase but not the acquisition training phase. However, no evidence of conditioning in either the acquisition or extinction training phase was observed for the corrugator supercilii. IU was not related to any measures during the acquisition or extinction training phases. Taken together, these results suggest that the current Pavlovian reward conditioning task was not sufficient for eliciting a reliable conditioned reward response, and therefore, further research with optimized reward conditioning designs are required to test whether IU-related deficits occur during the extinction of reward.

Highlights

  • Individuals, who score high in self-r­ eported intolerance of uncertainty (IU), tend to find uncertainty negative

  • IU was not related to any measures during the acquisition or extinction training phases

  • We examined the role of self-­reported IU in reward acquisition and extinction

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Summary

Introduction

Individuals, who score high in self-r­ eported intolerance of uncertainty (IU), tend to find uncertainty negative (i.e., stressful, distressing; Carleton, 2016a, 2016b). Recent research has shown individuals high in IU, relative to individuals low in IU, to display heightened physiological and neural activity to uncertain threat and reward (for review, see Tanovic et al, 2018). Research suggests that IU may play a critical role in associative threat learning (for review see Tanovic et al, 2018). During threat acquisition training with partial reinforcement, there is some evidence that individuals with high IU display greater startle blink to learned threat versus safety cues

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