Department of Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Ruhr University Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany.
Learn Mem. 2019 Jan 16;26(2):39-45. doi: 10.1101/lm.048223.118. Print 2019 Feb.
The immediate extinction deficit describes a higher return of fear when extinction takes place immediately after fear acquisition compared to a delayed extinction design. One explanation for this phenomenon encompasses the remaining emotional arousal evoked by fear acquisition to be still present during immediate, but not delayed extinction. In the present study, the predictive learning task, a learning task not involving arousal or stress, was used testing the hypothesis that no immediate extinction deficit should occur in this neutral task. Twenty-six participants underwent an immediate extinction procedure and were tested in a recall session 24 h later. For the delayed extinction group ( = 26), acquisition, extinction, and recall were realized 24 h apart from each other. Recall performance of a third group ( = 26) was tested 48 h after the immediate extinction procedure. The immediate extinction deficit was indeed observed for a stimulus not subject to a contextual change from acquisition to extinction, but not for other stimuli involving contextual changes or no extinction control stimuli. Even in a neutral learning task and without emotional arousal, the immediate extinction deficit could be detected but was restricted to the specific contextual embedding of stimuli. Thus, contextual processing appears to differentially modulate the emergence of the immediate extinction deficit.
即时消退缺陷描述了在恐惧获得后立即进行消退时，恐惧的回归率更高，而不是延迟消退设计。对于这种现象的一种解释是，在立即但不是延迟消退期间，恐惧获得所引起的剩余情绪唤醒仍然存在。在本研究中，使用了预测学习任务，这是一种不涉及唤醒或应激的学习任务，以检验以下假设：在这种中性任务中，不应出现即时消退缺陷。26 名参与者接受了即时消退程序，并在 24 小时后的回忆测试中进行了测试。对于延迟消退组（n=26），获得、消退和回忆彼此相隔 24 小时。即时消退程序后 48 小时，对第三组（n=26）进行了回忆测试。对于没有经历从获得到消退的上下文变化的刺激，确实观察到了即时消退缺陷，但对于涉及上下文变化或没有消退控制刺激的其他刺激，则没有观察到即时消退缺陷。即使在中性学习任务中，且没有情绪唤醒，也可以检测到即时消退缺陷，但仅限于刺激的特定上下文嵌入。因此，上下文处理似乎会以不同的方式调节即时消退缺陷的出现。
