Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK.
Cogn Emot. 2011 Sep;25(6):1139-47. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2010.524193. Epub 2011 May 24.
Social fears emerging in adolescence can have negative effects on emotional well-being. Yet the mechanisms by which these risks occur are unknown. One possibility is that associative learning results in fears to previously neutral social stimuli. Such conditioned responses may alter subsequent processing of social stimuli. We used a novel conditioning task to examine how associative processes influence social fear and attention orienting in adolescents. Neutral photographs were paired with socially rewarding or aversive stimuli during conditioning; a dot-probe task then assessed biases in attention orienting. The social conditioning task modified subjective ratings of the neutral stimuli. Moreover, for the neutral stimulus that was paired with the aversive stimulus, the strength of conditioning showed a relationship with subsequent attentional vigilance. The findings elucidate mechanisms by which negative peer experiences during adolescence may affect emotional processing.
青少年时期出现的社交恐惧可能会对情绪健康产生负面影响。然而，这些风险发生的机制尚不清楚。一种可能性是，联想学习导致对以前中性的社交刺激产生恐惧。这种条件反应可能会改变对社交刺激的后续处理。我们使用一种新颖的条件作用任务来研究联想过程如何影响青少年的社交恐惧和注意力定向。在条件作用期间，将中性照片与社交奖励或厌恶刺激配对；然后使用点探测任务评估注意力定向的偏差。社交条件作用任务改变了对中性刺激的主观评价。此外，对于与厌恶刺激配对的中性刺激，条件作用的强度与随后的注意力警觉性呈相关关系。这些发现阐明了青少年时期的负面同伴经历如何影响情绪处理的机制。
