Contingency awareness and fear inhibition in a human fear-potentiated startle paradigm.

2006/01/01 by Tanja Jovanović, Tanja Jovanovic, Seth D. Norrholm +9
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Memory and Neural Mechanisms #Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development

paper · doi:10.1037/0735-7044.120.5.995

Abstract

Fear-potentiated startle is defined as an increase in the magnitude of the startle reflex in the presence of a stimulus that was previously paired with an aversive event. It has been proposed that a subject's awareness of the contingencies in the experiment may affect fear-potentiated startle. The authors adapted a conditional discrimination procedure (AX+/BX-), previously validated in animals, to a human fear-potentiated startle paradigm in 50 healthy volunteers. This paradigm allows for an assessment of fear-potentiated startle during threat conditions as well as inhibition of fear-potentiated startle during safety conditions. A response keypad was used to assess contingency awareness on a trial-by-trial basis. Both aware and unaware subjects showed fear-potentiated startle. However, awareness was related to stimulus discrimination and fear inhibition.

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