TY - JOUR
T1 - Conceptual fear generalization gradients and their relationship with anxious traits
T2 - Results from a Registered Report
AU - Mertens, G.
AU - Bouwman, V.
AU - Engelhard, I.M.
N1 - Funding Information:
The research reported in this paper was funded by a NWO Vici grant (grant number: 453-15-005) awarded to Iris M. Engelhard. We would like to thank Arne Leer for his advice while conceptualizing this study. Furthermore, we would like to thank Bob Bevers, Tessa Kranendonk, Tim Luijk, Rosalie de Niet, Laura van Roekel, Bregje van Rooijen, Mara Simmes, and Damien Solak for their help with collecting the data.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - A hallmark symptom of fear and anxiety disorder is generalization of fear to essentially innocuous stimuli and situations. Such generalization can occur through both perceptual and conceptually similarities. Recent studies indicate that perceptual generalization is inflated in anxiety patients and individuals prone to develop anxiety disorders, suggesting that perceptual generalization may be involved in the etiology of anxiety disorders. In the current Registered Report, we wanted to address whether conceptual generalization is potentially implicated in the development of anxiety disorders as well. Therefore, we used a novel paradigm in which the Dutch word mini [tiny] or enorm [enormous] was paired with an electric shock and assessed fear to the conceptually related words klein [small], medium [medium], and groot [large]. The sample (N = 120) consisted of healthy university students. As hypothesized, we observed clear conceptual fear generalization gradients using both self-report and psychophysiological measures. However, in contrast to our expectations, these conceptual generalization gradients were not correlated with different anxious traits (i.e., trait anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty, and behavioral inhibition). These results show that fear can generalize conceptually along a gradient, without requiring perceptual errors as postulated by traditional models of fear generalization. Instead, our results correspond well with inferential reasoning theories of fear generalization. Additionally, we discuss potential reasons for the absence of the expected correlations between conceptual fear generalization and anxious traits, such as restricted variability in both the generalization task and the sample. We conclude that the paradigm has promise for further research on conceptual fear generalization.
AB - A hallmark symptom of fear and anxiety disorder is generalization of fear to essentially innocuous stimuli and situations. Such generalization can occur through both perceptual and conceptually similarities. Recent studies indicate that perceptual generalization is inflated in anxiety patients and individuals prone to develop anxiety disorders, suggesting that perceptual generalization may be involved in the etiology of anxiety disorders. In the current Registered Report, we wanted to address whether conceptual generalization is potentially implicated in the development of anxiety disorders as well. Therefore, we used a novel paradigm in which the Dutch word mini [tiny] or enorm [enormous] was paired with an electric shock and assessed fear to the conceptually related words klein [small], medium [medium], and groot [large]. The sample (N = 120) consisted of healthy university students. As hypothesized, we observed clear conceptual fear generalization gradients using both self-report and psychophysiological measures. However, in contrast to our expectations, these conceptual generalization gradients were not correlated with different anxious traits (i.e., trait anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty, and behavioral inhibition). These results show that fear can generalize conceptually along a gradient, without requiring perceptual errors as postulated by traditional models of fear generalization. Instead, our results correspond well with inferential reasoning theories of fear generalization. Additionally, we discuss potential reasons for the absence of the expected correlations between conceptual fear generalization and anxious traits, such as restricted variability in both the generalization task and the sample. We conclude that the paradigm has promise for further research on conceptual fear generalization.
KW - Anxiety
KW - Behavioral inhibition
KW - Conceptual generalization
KW - Fear generalization
KW - Intolerance of uncertainty
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85116486752&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2021.09.007
DO - 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2021.09.007
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85116486752
SN - 0167-8760
VL - 170
SP - 43
EP - 50
JO - International Journal of Psychophysiology
JF - International Journal of Psychophysiology
ER -