Training discrimination diminishes maladaptive avoidance of innocuous stimuli in a fear conditioning paradigm.

ABSTRACT: Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorder worldwide. Although anxiety disorders differ in the nature of feared objects or situations, they share a common mechanism by which fear generalizes to related but innocuous objects, eliciting avoidance of objects and situations that pose no objective risk. This overgeneralization appears to be a crucial mechanism in the persistence of anxiety psychopathology. In this study we test whether an intervention that promotes discrimination learning reduces generalization of fear, in particular, harm expectancy and avoidance compared to an irrelevant (control) training. Healthy participants (N = 80) were randomly allocated to a training condition. Using a fear conditioning paradigm, participants first learned visual danger and safety signals (s

SUBMITTER: Lommen MJJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5638232 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature