Fear learning and generalization during pandemic fear: How COVID-19-related anxiety affects classical fear conditioning with traumatic film clips.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic greatly disrupted our daily lives. Worldwide, people were confronted with health, financial, and existential fears or trauma-like experiences. Recent studies have identified an increase in stress, anxiety, and fear symptoms in connection with the pandemic. Furthermore, fear learning processes are central mechanisms in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Patients commonly show impairments not only in fear learning but also in its generalization. Thus, pandemic-related anxiety may constitute a risk factor for both enhanced fear acquisition and generalization. In a pre-registered online study with a final sample of 220 healthy university students, we investigated whether participants with higher COVID-19-related anxiety (COVID-Anxiety) show impaired fea

SUBMITTER: Hauck A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9365308 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature