Discrimination between safe and unsafe stimuli mediates the relationship between trait anxiety and return of fear

ABSTRACT

Individuals with anxiety disorders show deficits in the discrimination between a cue that predicts an aversive outcome and a safe stimulus that predicts the absence of that outcome. This impairment has been linked to increased spontaneous recovery of fear following extinction, however it is unknown if there is a link between discrimination and return of fear in a novel context (i.e. context renewal). It is also unknown if impaired discrimination mediates the relationship between trait anxiety and either spontaneous recovery or context renewal. The present study used a differential fear conditioning paradigm to examine the relationships between trait anxiety, discrimination learning, spontaneous recovery and context renewal in healthy volunteers. Fear learning was assessed using continuous ratings of US expectancy and subjective ratings of fear. Discrimination mediated the relationships between trait anxiety and both spontaneous recovery and context renewal such that elevated trait anxiety was associated with poorer discrimination, which in turn was associated with increased fear at test phases. Results are discussed in terms of the genesis and maintenance of anxiety disorders.

KEYWORDS:

• Discrimination
• conditioning
• spontaneous recovery
• context renewal
• anxiety

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Kelly Chen, Stephanie Dus, Kyle Sterrett, Tina Wang, and Jessica Jimenez for their helpful contributions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2014 to present) To LKS.