Fear relevance and diminution of unconditioned skin conductance responses

According to Donegan and Wagner's priming model [1987], a signalled UCS will elicit a smaller UCR than an unsignalled UCS. Assuming that fear-relevant CSs are good predictors of aversive UCSs, while fear-irrelevant CSs are relatively bad predictors of aversive UCSs, the present study examined the effect of fear relevance on electrodermal UCR diminution during the acquisition phase of a single cue conditioning procedure. Four groups were studied, each of which consisted of 12 subjects. Group 1 had a fear-relevant CS (a slide of an angry face) paired with a UCS (7 mA shock), whereas group 2 had a fear-irrelevant CS (a slide of a happy face) paired with a UCS. Groups 3 and 4 had unpaired presentations of the CS and UCS and served as control groups for 1 and 2. There were 4 habituation, 8 acquisition, 4 recovery (UCS-only), and 6 extinction (CS-only) trials. While overall UCR levels were lower in the paired than in the unpaired control groups, it was also found that the size of UCR decrement and subsequent recovery was greater in the angry face CS-paired group than in the happy face CS-paired group. This finding is in line with the predictions that flow from the Donegan and Wagner model.