Generalisation of fear and avoidance along a semantic continuum

Abstract

Directly conditioned fear and avoidance readily generalises to dissimilar but conceptually related stimuli. Here, for the first time, we examined the conceptual/semantic generalisation of both fear and avoidance using real words (synonyms). Participants were first exposed to a differential fear conditioning procedure in which one word (e.g., “broth”; CS+) was followed with brief electric shock [unconditioned stimulus (US)] and another was not (e.g., “assist”; CS–). Next, an instrumental conditioning phase taught avoidance in the presence the CS+ but not the CS–. During generalisation testing, synonyms of the CS+ (e.g., “soup”; GCS+) and CS– (e.g., “help”; GCS–) were presented in the absence of shock. Conditioned fear and avoidance, measured via skin conductance responses, behavioural avoidance and US expectancy ratings, generalised to the semantically related, but not to the semantically unrelated, synonyms. Findings have implications for how natural language categories and concepts mediate the expansion of fear and avoidance repertoires in clinical contexts.

Keywords:

• Fear conditioning
• Avoidance
• Generalisation
• Semantic generalisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

These data were presented at the Fifth European Meeting on Human Fear Conditioning, Affligem, Belgium, 22–24 May 2013 and were collected as part of the first author's master's level research under the supervision of the second author. Manuscript preparation was supported by a KU Leuven Center of Excellence on Generalization Research (GRIP*TT; PF/10/005) grant to Dirk Hermans.