An exploration of amygdala-prefrontal mechanisms in the intergenerational transmission of learned fear.

ABSTRACT: Humans learn about their environments by observing others, including what to fear and what to trust. Observational fear learning may be especially important early in life when children turn to their parents to gather information about their world. Yet, the vast majority of empirical research on fear learning in youth has thus far focused on firsthand classical conditioning, which may fail to capture one of the primary means by which fears are acquired during development. To address this gap in the literature, the present study examined observational fear learning in youth (n = 33; age range: 6-17 years) as they watched videos of their parent and an "unfamiliar parent" (i.e., another participant's parent) undergo fear conditioning. Youth demonstrated stronger fear learning when observing th

SUBMITTER: Silvers JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8162830 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature