Contextual fear conditioning predicts subsequent avoidance behaviour in a virtual reality environment

Abstract

Avoidance behaviour is a crucial component of fear and is importantly involved in the maintenance of anxiety disorders. Presumably, fear conditioning leads to avoidance of the feared object or context. A virtual reality contextual fear conditioning paradigm was used to investigate the association between explicit conditioning effects and subsequent avoidance behaviour. Mild electric shocks were administered in one context (anxiety context), but never in a second context (safety context). Subsequent avoidance behaviour was assessed by asking participants to choose two out of three contexts (a neutral context was added) to visit again. Participants avoided the anxiety context, but did not prefer the safety over the neutral context. Participants with substantial conditioning effects, as reflected in differential valence, arousal and anxiety ratings, avoided the anxiety context but not the safety context. In sum, we demonstrated an association between context conditioning effects on an explicit level and later avoidance behaviour.

Keywords:

• Contextual fear conditioning
• Avoidance
• Ratings
• Virtual reality

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG): Collaborative Research Center “Fear, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders”, SFB-TRR 58 project B1 to PP and AM.

We thank Gerald Wiele for assistance in data collection and Christian Tröger and Mathias Müller for their excellent technical support.