AUTHOR=Herzog Katharina , Andreatta Marta , Schneider Kristina , Schiele Miriam A. , Domschke Katharina , Romanos Marcel , Deckert Jürgen , Pauli Paul 

TITLE=Reducing Generalization of Conditioned Fear: Beneficial Impact of Fear Relevance and Feedback in Discrimination Training

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.665711

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.665711

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=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 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 discrimination between threat and safety signals in healthy individuals, at least for learning-related evaluations, but not evaluations of valence or (physiological) arousal.