Shiban Youssef, Reichenberger Jonas, Neumann Inga D, Mühlberger Andreas
Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Institute of Psychology, University of Regensburg , Regensburg, Germany.
Department of Behavioral and Molecular Neurobiology, Institute of Zoology, University of Regensburg , Regensburg, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2015 Apr 7;6:400. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00400. eCollection 2015.
In human beings, experiments investigating fear conditioning with social stimuli are rare. The current study aims at translating an animal model for social fear conditioning (SFC) to a human sample using an operant SFC paradigm in virtual reality. Forty participants actively (using a joystick) approached virtual male agents that served as conditioned stimuli (CS). During the acquisition phase, unconditioned stimuli (US), a combination of an air blast (5 bar, 10 ms) and a female scream (95 dB, 40 ms), were presented when participants reached a defined proximity to the agent with a contingency of 75% for CS+ agents and never for CS- agents. During the extinction and the test phases, no US was delivered. Outcome variables were pleasantness ratings and physiological reactions in heart rate (HR) and fear-potentiated startle. Additionally, the influence of social anxiety, which was measured with the Social Phobia Inventory scale, was evaluated. As expected after the acquisition phase the CS+ was rated clearly less pleasant than the CS-. This difference vanished during extinction. Furthermore, the HR remained high for the CS+, while the HR for the CS- was clearly lower after than before the acquisition. Furthermore, a clear difference between CS+ and CS- after the acquisition indicated successful conditioning on this translational measure. Contrariwise no CS+/CS- differences were observed in the physiological variables during extinction. Importantly, at the generalization test, higher socially fearful participants rated pleasantness of all agents as low whereas the lower socially fearful participants rated pleasantness as low only for the CS+. SFC was successfully induced and extinguished confirming operant conditioning in this SFC paradigm. These findings suggest that the paradigm is suitable to expand the knowledge about the learning and unlearning of social fears. Further studies should investigate the operant mechanisms of development and treatment of social anxiety disorder.
在人类中，利用社会刺激研究恐惧条件作用的实验很少见。当前的研究旨在使用虚拟现实中的操作性社会恐惧条件作用（SFC）范式，将社会恐惧条件作用的动物模型转化到人类样本中。40名参与者通过操纵杆主动接近充当条件刺激（CS）的虚拟男性角色。在习得阶段，当参与者与角色达到特定接近程度时，会呈现无条件刺激（US），即一阵气流（5巴，10毫秒）和一声女性尖叫（95分贝，40毫秒）的组合，对于CS+角色，出现概率为75%，而CS-角色则从不出现。在消退阶段和测试阶段，不给予US。结果变量包括愉悦度评分以及心率（HR）和恐惧增强惊吓中的生理反应。此外，还评估了用社交恐惧症量表测量的社交焦虑的影响。正如在习得阶段后所预期的那样，CS+的愉悦度评分明显低于CS-。这种差异在消退过程中消失。此外，CS+的HR仍然很高，而CS-的HR在习得后明显低于习得前。此外，习得后CS+和CS-之间的明显差异表明在这种转化测量上条件作用成功。相反，在消退过程中，生理变量未观察到CS+/CS-差异。重要的是，在泛化测试中，社交恐惧程度较高的参与者将所有角色的愉悦度都评为低，而社交恐惧程度较低的参与者仅将CS+的愉悦度评为低。SFC被成功诱导和消退，证实了这种SFC范式中的操作性条件作用。这些发现表明该范式适合扩展关于社会恐惧的学习和消退的知识。进一步的研究应调查社交焦虑障碍发展和治疗的操作性机制。
