The role of valence and arousal in ‘fear’ conditioning of face processing?
-
1
University of Wollongong, School of Psychology and Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, Australia
Aims: Fear conditioning provides a useful experimental model for studying the effect of threat-related cues on learning, and faces are often used as conditioning stimuli (CS) because emotional responses to faces are often acquired through conditioning. The present study aimed to further explore how fear conditioning influences subjective (ratings) and objective (event-related potential; ERP) measures of face processing using neutral, pleasant and unpleasant unconditioned stimulus (UCS) presentations paired with neutral faces.
Method: 18 undergraduate (9 male) participants rated valence to faces before and after a conditioning task, where Electroencephalograph (EEG) data were recorded while participants viewed faces combined with IAPS images; unpleasant (UP), pleasant (PL), neutral (control; CTL). Each participant received all conditions (counterbalanced).
Results: Subjective face ratings indicated that whereas faces became more pleasant for CTL following the conditioning task, they became more unpleasant for PL and UP. Relative to CTL, the N170 was enhanced for both PL and UP images, whereas the N250 was increased for UP only.
Conclusions: The current study suggests that conditioning of the N170 is independent of valence, and is rather affected by arousal, whereas the conditioning of the N250 is dependent on valence. Of note is the fractionation of subjective and objective measures, in that subjective ratings matched the N170 arousal effects, but not the N250 valence effects. This raises the possibility that traditional ‘fear’ conditioning paradigms involve multiple conditioning elements, and argues for the need to separate valence and arousal in fear conditioning research.
Keywords:
N170,
N250,
Electroencephalography (EEG),
event-related potential (ERP),
face processing,
Fear conditioning
Conference:
Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Inc, Coffs Harbour, Australia, 26 Nov - 28 Nov, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Psychophysiology
Citation:
Kornfeld
EJ,
Camfield
DA and
Croft
RJ
(2014). The role of valence and arousal in ‘fear’ conditioning of face processing?.
Conference Abstract:
Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Inc.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2014.216.00041
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
22 Oct 2014;
Published Online:
05 Dec 2014.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Emma J Kornfeld, University of Wollongong, School of Psychology and Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, Wollongong, Australia, emma.kornfeld@student.unsw.edu.au