TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schiele, Miriam A.
A1  - Reinhard, Julia
A1  - Reif, Andreas
A1  - Domschke, Katharina
A1  - Romanos, Marcel
A1  - Deckert, Jürgen
A1  - Pauli, Paul
T1  - Developmental aspects of fear: Comparing the acquisition and generalization of conditioned fear in children and adults
JF  - Developmental Psychobiology
N2  - Most research on human fear conditioning and its generalization has focused on adults whereas only little is known about these processes in children. Direct comparisons between child and adult populations are needed to determine developmental risk markers of fear and anxiety. We compared 267 children and 285 adults in a differential fear conditioning paradigm and generalization test. Skin conductance responses (SCR) and ratings of valence and arousal were obtained to indicate fear learning. Both groups displayed robust and similar differential conditioning on subjective and physiological levels. However, children showed heightened fear generalization compared to adults as indexed by higher arousal ratings and SCR to the generalization stimuli. Results indicate overgeneralization of conditioned fear as a developmental correlate of fear learning. The developmental change from a shallow to a steeper generalization gradient is likely related to the maturation of brain structures that modulate efficient discrimination between danger and (ambiguous) safety cues.
KW  - fear conditioning
KW  - fear generalization
KW  - development
KW  - skin conductance
KW  - maturation
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-189488
VL  - 58
IS  - 4
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Herzog, Katharina
A1  - Andreatta, Marta
A1  - Schneider, Kristina
A1  - Schiele, Miriam A.
A1  - Domschke, Katharina
A1  - Romanos, Marcel
A1  - Deckert, Jürgen
A1  - Pauli, Paul
T1  - Reducing Generalization of Conditioned Fear: Beneficial Impact of Fear Relevance and Feedback in Discrimination Training
JF  - Frontiers in Psychology
N2  - Anxiety patients over-generalize fear, possibly because of an incapacity to discriminate threat and safety signals. Discrimination trainings are promising approaches for reducing such fear over-generalization. Here we investigated the efficacy of a fear-relevant vs. a fear-irrelevant discrimination training on fear generalization and whether the effects are increased with feedback during training. Eighty participants underwent two fear acquisition blocks, during which one face (conditioned stimulus, CS+), but not another face (CS−), was associated with a female scream (unconditioned stimulus, US). During two generalization blocks, both CSs plus four morphs (generalization stimuli, GS1–GS4) were presented. Between these generalization blocks, half of the participants underwent a fear-relevant discrimination training (discrimination between CS+ and the other faces) with or without feedback and the other half a fear-irrelevant discrimination training (discrimination between the width of lines) with or without feedback. US expectancy, arousal, valence ratings, and skin conductance responses (SCR) indicated successful fear acquisition. Importantly, fear-relevant vs. fear-irrelevant discrimination trainings and feedback vs. no feedback reduced generalization as reflected in US expectancy ratings independently from one another. No effects of training condition were found for arousal and valence ratings or SCR. In summary, this is a first indication that fear-relevant discrimination training and feedback can improve the discrimination between threat and safety signals in healthy individuals, at least for learning-related evaluations, but not evaluations of valence or (physiological) arousal.
KW  - fear generalization
KW  - feedback
KW  - discrimination training
KW  - fear-relevant training
KW  - classical conditioning
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-239970
SN  - 1664-1078
VL  - 12
ER  -